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The mist of the www
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this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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I am annoyed by (but respect) APIs that take it a level further and don't even give you a 403 to say you're unauthorised, they just give you a 404 because anything else would acknowledge that the resource you requested actually existed
I don't respect them because most instances a 403 is more than adequate for your security. The only time I agree with having a 404 over a 403 would be file-specific pathing, but realistically the entire file directory should be a 403 instead of a 404, And then if the user is authorized to access the resource(but it isn't there), then it gives a 404.
But if there is no resource, how can the system know whether they are authorized? 403 it is.
Whether you respond as a 404 or a 403 would be dependent on whether or not the user who is logged in has the authorization to read the previous directory.
A site administrator, for example, would have the authority to read the previous directory, which means that the site administrator would know whether or not the resource existed or not(as the previous directory would list it) so in which case a 404 would be proper. However, a user who doesn't have authority to read the previous directory should not have the ability to know whether or not it exists. so a 404 would not be proper here because the proper one would be a 403 because it's inherited from the previous directory.
edit: changed traverse to read, as traversal doesn't mean you can see what else is there.
Yea, it doesn't matter too much in most instances, but there are times when it might, especially if the URL itself has some meaning embedded in it. For example if part of the path is a SHA sum of some content, which is fairly common, it might be bad to allow someone to determine if that resource exists
Wouldn't unauthorized only be meant for AFTER a login is successful?
Like, the user should have to have an active session first. Maybe you're just talking about that case though.
unauthorized (403) is still valid for unlogged in as you can permit anonymous access to certain resources.
unauthenticated (401) is for when you should be redirecting the user to the login page
Thanks. I think I might have been misreading these in my head. Dyslexia is a dickhead. The number codes really helped.
Maybe I meant unauthenticated. What is this, mandatory cybersecurity education!?
I'm not sure. I was actually asking. And I'm not even sure enough to tell if this is a joke reply you're making or not. Lol.
I just assume the process is to start a general session. Rather than accessing the request to the resource directly.
So, I guess it would be abstracted a bit though. The user COULD be successful at starting the session. Get a success response to redirect to the resource they are trying to reach AFTER the session starts. Then once they are logged in their privileges are checked on that resource. Either returning an unauthorized response or the actual content.
So, I'd guess this is (at minimum) a two step process. Though from a user perspective they just login and get the resource.
If the login fails it's just a single response. I'd guess for security just a 200 response but with no session token or response.
Honestly, I'm just typing this for my brain to try to remember the small amount of work I did with Redfish and RESTful stuff awhile back.
But, you are right. There isn't a reason to give the user html error codes that can tell them anything more than they should know. Without a user session or without user privileges it's just telling users more than they should. Redirecting to a 404 page with the same generic response is probably best practice. As long as it's consistent.