Whitelist Domain Authentication Laravel

Question

I'm looking for the best way to only allow certain domains to access my laravel application. I'm currently using Laravel 5.1 and am using a Middleware to redirect if the referring domain isn't located in the whitelisted domains.

class Whitelist {

    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */

    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        //requesting URL
        $referer = Request::server('HTTP_REFERER');

        //parse url to match base in table
        $host = parse_url($referer, PHP_URL_HOST);
        $host = str_replace("www.", "", $host);

        //Cached query to whitelisted domains - 1400 = 24 hours
        $whiteList = Cache::remember('whitelist_domains', 1400, function(){
            $query = WhiteListDomains::lists('domain')->all();
            return $query;
        });

        //Check that referring domain is whitelisted or itself?
        if(in_array($host, $whiteList)){
            return $next($request);
        }else{
            header('HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden');
            die('You are not allowed to access this file.');
        }
    }
}

Is there a better way to go about doing this, or am I on the right track?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You're on the right track, the implementation seems to be fine.

However, do not trust the HTTP_REFERER as a means of authentication/identification as it can be modified easily.