NGINX – Disable direct access (via http and https) to a website using IP address

For the requirements wherein direct access to a website using IP address has to be disabled/blocked, following steps can be followed

To disable/block direct access to IP for port 80 create a new or add to an existing (as required) server configurations as follows

server {
 listen 80 default_server;
 server_name _;
 return 404;
}

where _ catches all the domain names pointing to your server’s IP address and the configuration will block all traffic to your IP address (http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS) by returning the default 404 Not Found Nginx page.

To disable/block direct access to IP for port 443 use the following in one of your server configurations block

if ($host != "example.com") {
 return 404;
}

example

server {
 listen 443 ssl;
 server_name example.com
 
 ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.crt;
 ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;

 if ($host != "example.com") {
  return 404;
 }
}

this will block all traffic to https://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS

Hope this helps!

This article was first published on the Knoldus blog.