The world of web server management comes with its fair share of security concerns. Among these is the need to restrict access to certain HTTP methods on your server to prevent potential unauthorized actions. In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of how you can configure your Nginx web server to allow only GET and POST methods, which are the most common HTTP methods for web applications.
Before we start, it’s crucial to understand what GET and POST methods are. The GET method retrieves data from a specified resource, while the POST method submits data to be processed to a specified resource. Now, let’s get into the step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Installation of Nginx
In case you haven’t installed Nginx on your server, the first step is to install it. The following commands should suffice on a Ubuntu-based server:
sudo apt updatesudo apt install nginx
After installation, ensure that Nginx is running by typing:
systemctl status nginx
Step 2: Creating or Editing a Server Block
To restrict the HTTP methods, you need to edit the configuration of the server block that you want to modify. This is usually located in /etc/nginx/sites-available/. For this example, let’s say you have a server block file named yourdomain.com. Open it using a text editor:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com
Step 3: Allowing GET and POST Methods Only
Once you have your configuration file open, you’ll need to add or modify a location block in the server block. In the location block, add the if directive to check for requests that aren’t using the GET or POST method and return a ‘405 Not Allowed’ status. Here’s an example of how you can do this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | server { listen 80; server_name yourdomain.com; location / { if ($request_method !~ ^(GET|POST)$ ) { return 405; } try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } |
This configuration returns a 405 error for any method that isn’t a GET or POST. The ~ character is a regular expression match operator, and the ^ character indicates the start of a line. So !~ ^(GET|POST)$ matches any request method that isn’t at the start of the line and isn’t either GET or POST.
Step 4: Testing Your Configuration
After editing the configuration file, it’s important to test your configuration to ensure there are no syntax errors:
sudo nginx -t
If the configuration is correct, you’ll see an output similar to this:
Output:nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
Step 5: Reloading Nginx
Once you’re sure that your configuration is correct, you can apply the changes by reloading Nginx:
sudo systemctl reload nginx
Now your Nginx server should only allow GET and POST methods.
Conclusion
This guide showed you how to restrict HTTP methods in Nginx to only allow GET and POST. It’s a simple and effective way to increase your server’s security by preventing unwanted actions from being executed. Remember, the best security strategies involve a layered approach, and this is just one aspect of hardening your web server’s security.