Unable to execute PHP, throws 500 error. Able to upload and execute all others

Question

I managed to upload a PHP shell using an upload form with some tweaking. No such restrictions except it renames the uploaded file to md5. But when I tried to execute the shell, It shows a 500 error. I am able to view or download all other files such as HTML, JS, JPG etc. On digging further, I found that there is a .htaccess file with the content below. Is there a possibility that PHP is not executing because of the permissions? Is there a way to execute PHP or gain shell using any other ways?

Options -Indexes

<files .htaccess>
  order allow,deny
  deny from all
</files>

#Add all file you want to protect...
<FilesMatch "\.(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|zip|rar|mp3|phps|fla|psd|log|sh|php)$">
  Order Allow,Deny
  Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

It is confirmed that the server has PHP Installed and executes PHP on all other directories except uploads folder.

Steps already performed:

1. Tried uploading shell with different extensions and combination of lower/upper case like PhP, PHp. phtml extension also gets uploaded but same issue of internal server error while executing phtml too.

2. Checked uploading and viewing HTML on browser, works fine.

3. Tried with a simple PHP echo. Not working.

Answer 1

If the server is refusing to execute a php script on the uploads folder but runs php scripts elsewhere, it sounds like the server is working as it should. You'll need to use one of those other directories to pop and explore.

Answer 2

I can see two different possibilities:

• There is an actual error in your PHP code that leads to the 500 response. The simple echo test should check for this. An empty file would be an even better test.

• Even though PHP is only blocked in a certain folder, the configuration does not have to be in that folders .htaccess. An .htaccess file in some parent folder or settings in httpd.conf could be blocking PHP execution in the uploads folder.