Basic Authentication & Access Control

When Nginx serves content or acts as a proxy, it's crucial to control who can access your resources. This helps prevent unauthorized access and keeps your applications secure.

In this lesson, we'll explore two fundamental ways to secure Nginx: Basic HTTP Authentication and IP-based Access Control.

Basic HTTP Authentication is a simple way to protect web resources using a username and password. When a user tries to access a protected resource, their browser will prompt them to enter credentials.

• The browser sends credentials with each request.
• Nginx verifies these against a stored file.
• It's straightforward but sends credentials as base64 encoded text (not encrypted), so always use it with HTTPS!