Apache 2.2 Bug

Todays issue did hit the apache 2.2 webserver while handling range requests. Range requests, according to HTTP 1.1 are not bad at all as they were used for resuming downloads in example. But where an overly wide range is requested from the server things lead to a crash in the server, which isn’t great at all. But sadly there is no official patch yet. As a workaround you may use mod_rewrite to prevent worst:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(HEAD|GET) [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Range} ([0-9]*-[0-9]*)(\s*,\s*[0-9]*-[0-9]*)+
RewriteRule .* - [F]

This small config block only acts on getting range requests rewriting them so they do no harm.