How to hide certain file type using apache .htaccess?

Question

Its been a long time since I\'ve needed to crack open an .htaccess file...

What is the simplest way to 40x prevent access to a specific file extension through out the

Answer 1

I like both @Chris Lawlor's and @starkeen's answers and since OP asked about "40x" I'm going to suggest redirecting to a 404 error since it doesn't give away the fact the files exist.

This is what I'm currently using in one of my projects:

# Hide files not concerning the user
RedirectMatch 404 \.(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|log|sh|inc|bak|bkp|sql)$