nginx - deny all *.php requests except index.php for security reasons

Question

os: CentOS 7
nginx: 1.6.2
httpd: apache 2.4.6
cms: Drupal 7

After my server was compromised I removed all from server, reinstalled OS and soft, and restored data from backup. Now I configure all services in maximum security style.

After detail researching access logs - I decided to deny any requests for php files except index.php which is in the site documents root for improving security.

Nginx access log contents a lot of records like:

azenv2.php
az.php

and

/*/wp-login.php
/administrator/index.php
/MyAdmin/index.php

First category - backdoors (and one of them hacked my sites, somebody send huge portion of spam from my server).

Second - somebody want to find popular cms and utilities and try some login@password, like admin@123456

My reasons to block both categories by nginx through deny requests to php files are:

1. Even if somebody will upload php-shell - it will be impossible to use it.

2. All these requests are 'not good' a priory - and to refuse them by nginx will protect drupal(httpd+php+mysql) to work and spent power.

My current config for one virtual host:

server {

  listen <server-ip>;
  server_name <site-name>;

  location ~* /sites/default/files/styles/ {
    try_files $uri @imagestyles;
  }

  location @imagestyles {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:<port>;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    access_log off;
  }

  location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|bmp|swf|js|pdf|zip|rar|mp3|flv|doc|xls)$ {
    root <site-documents-root>;
    access_log off;
  }

  location ~ (^|/)\. {
    deny  all;
  }

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:<port>;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    access_log <path-to-log-folder>/nginx_access.log main;
  }

}

nginx.conf - was not changed after installation.

---

UPDATE
Finally I create this config for deny:

location ~ \.php$ {
  access_log /path/to/log/nginx_deny.log name_log;
  deny all;
}

and this config for proxy:

location =/index.php {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:<port>;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}

location =/cron.php {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:<port>;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}

location / {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:<port>;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}

1). So full information about attacks attempts is collects in log.
2). Server not make additional work for bad requests.
3). Drupal cron may work.

Answer 1

You can achieve this in a number of ways.

Integrating quite directly with what you have in your config file, you may wish to simply include a section such as the following;

location ~ \.php$ {
try_files index.php @error;

fastcgi_pass ...;

fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to$fastcgi_script_name;

...
}

location @error {
[config of however you want to handle errors]
}

Which will check for the existence of the requested file before allowing its access/execution.

Further to the above however, I would actually personally recommend using fail2ban which will provide you more comprehensive security if configured correctly; you can configure it to monitor your access logs in real-time and ban IPs from accessing your server(s) by automatically creating new iptables rules on-the-fly, with ban times which you specify.

Personally I have my servers configured to use fail2ban with nginx as per this article (or at least based upon that - you may alter it as you wish).