What is the security problem to use Options FollowSymLinks in the Apache configuration?
What are the safety risks associated with using Options FollowSymLinks in the Apache Configurations?
I found out via some informational sites that FollowSymLinks is a directive in your web server configuration that tells your web server to follow so called symbolic links. As one would expect, FollowSymLinks is an acronym for Follow Symbolic Links. FollowSymLinks is a very important setting that plays a role in your website security.
If you enable the following Options FollowSymLinks, and an attacker gains access to something allowing him to create arbitrary files on your webserver, he could then create symbolic links to any file on your system (e.g. /etc/passwd, configurations files of databases, ...)