title: What does this [F] RewriteRule with multiple RewriteConds do?
body: <p>I'm looking at ways to &quot;harden&quot; WordPress installations and recently came across some code to place in the site .htaccess file. However, it had no explanation as to what it does, and I'm trying to figure it out, but with little success.</p>
  <p>The code / rule is:</p>
  <pre><code>RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(wp-login.php|wp-admin/|wp-content/plugins/|wp-includes/).* [NC]
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ ///.*\ HTTP/ [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*\?\=?(http|ftp|ssl|https):/.*\ HTTP/ [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*\?\?.*\ HTTP/ [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*\.(asp|ini|dll).*\ HTTP/ [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*\.(htpasswd|htaccess|aahtpasswd).*\ HTTP/ [NC]
  RewriteRule .? - [F,NS,L]
  </code></pre>
  <p>I can see this this comes into play when any of the pages in the first line are called, but beyond that I'm in the dark. What can I try next?</p>