apache + .htpasswd - bypass pwd check

From: Hallberg Tom (tom.hallberg@rfv.sfa.se)
Date: 04/25/02 

To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com
From: "Hallberg Tom" <tom.hallberg@rfv.sfa.se>
Date: 25 Apr 2002 09:45:00 +0200

Hi

yesterday I managed to bypass the pwd check when using .htpasswd. The problem
now is that Im not sure how to secure it.

Okej let say that user ivan have protected his /home/ivan/public_html/topsecret
directory. And on the samer server we have the user johan, from his public_html
directory we make an symlink ln -s /home/ivan/public_html/topsecret test
okej so then johan tries http://www.hostname.whatever/~johan/test
he will end up in ivan' s topsecret directory..

So what have I missed in my httpd.conf or something else? :)

thanx
/Tom