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Showing posts from December, 2015

Nginx secure link with node.js

Serving static files is a natural task for web servers. They, especially ones, having asynchronous architecture (like Nginx), are very good at such tasks. However, usually there is an additional security logic, which should restrict access to files you've published. IIS, for example, offers deep integration with application layer, which allows custom .NET "middleware" logic injection into the request pipeline. Node.js applications are very often published behind Nginx for various reasons and, with the help of Nginx "Secure Link" module, it's possible to offload static file serving tasks from node.js to Nginx, even if the files are not public. This module uses "shared secret" string (known to Nginx and the application) and expects a hash, based on this secret, to be present in the request to decide whether to proceed or return an error. Secure Link module may work in 2 alternative modes ( http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_secure_link_modul