[SECURITY] Hardening NGINX Against DDoS and Layer 7 Floods

[JackaL]

[SECURITY] Hardening NGINX Against DDoS and Layer 7 Floods

Standard rate-limiting in NGINX protects your forum login and registration pages from brute-force botnets and credential stuffing attacks.

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Implementation Steps:
Add the following rate-limiting zone into the http { block of your main NGINX configuration file:

# Define a memory zone for tracking request rates (10 requests per second limit per IP)
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=login_limit:10m rate=10r/s;

# Apply it specifically to the login route inside your server block
location /login/ {
    limit_req zone=login_limit burst=20 nodelay;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$uri$args;
}