What are essential Nginx security headers?
X-Frame-Options (SAMEORIGIN, prevents clickjacking), X-Content-Type-Options (nosniff, prevents MIME sniffing), X-XSS-Protection, Referrer-Policy, Content-Security-Policy, and Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) for HTTPS-only.
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More FAQs in AWS EC2 Security Best Practices Hardening Your Node.js Server
Use key-based authentication only (disable PasswordAuthentication in sshd_config), restrict SSH to your IP in the security group, disable root login (PermitRootLogin no), and use the ubuntu user with sudo for privileged commands. Never run Node.js as root.
No. Never expose the Node.js port (3000) directly to the internet. All traffic should go through Nginx on port 80/443, which proxies to localhost:3000. Only ports 22 (SSH from your IP), 80, and 443 should be open.
Install unattended-upgrades (sudo apt install unattended-upgrades) and configure it with sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades. This automatically installs security updates as they become available.
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