Lockdown Feature

When publishing Web portal, most of the time we to want prevent users from accessing the application pages: _layouts/…/default.aspx

The reason to activate this feature in an internet environment is to change the permissions level of the anonymous users group Limited Access privilege. Because there is no way to change these permissions through the UI, we need to use this Feature.

The Lockdown feature removes the View Application Pages permission, and the Use Remote Interfaces permission. This is helpful in preventing users from accessing application pages on a public facing/Internet web site

The Command:

stsadm -o activatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

Note: this is the same like on all features, we can deactivate this feature (unlocked):

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

Link to Microsoft LockDown syntax: LINK