MyAAC 1.8.8 - hide admin panel

[Gover]

Hello,
Maybe someone have better idea to hide the /admin panel on MyAAC website - i would be more then happy to hear your opinions.

I was thinking that giving an access to login page for admin panel for users is a way to let them try to break the server.

I could change the /admin to something else to hide it or set a cloudflare to this url as anty brute force - but finally I decided to hide it (block) in nginx.

But I found an idea to maybe block it using nginx - I would like to know if that is a good way to do it, or maybe I overthink it and there is much simplier way to achieve that.

Im using block like this in nginx site config (server section):

    location /admin {
    allow 0.0.0.0;
    deny all;

        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

And a simple script that allow you to open the access to admin panel using one command (openadmin 10.10.10.10). Script file of course is in /usr/local/bin with correct execute permissions:

#!/bin/bash

NGINX_SITE="/etc/nginx/sites-available/site"
TEMP_FILE="/tmp/site.tmp"

# Find if there is a parameter
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "Usage: sudo openadmin <IP_ADDRESS>"
    exit 1
fi

IP=$1

# Simple IP validation (IPv4)
if ! [[ $IP =~ ^([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}$ ]]; then
    echo "Invalid IP address format."
    exit 1
fi

# Change location /admin block in main nginx file
# Finding a correct place: location /admin { ... } and replace the allow
awk -v ip="$IP" '
  BEGIN {inside=0}
  /location \/admin/ {inside=1; print; next}
  inside && /allow/ {print "    allow " ip ";"; next}
  inside && /deny all/ {print "    deny all;"; inside=0; next}
  {print}
' "$NGINX_SITE" > "$TEMP_FILE"

# Change original file
cp "$TEMP_FILE" "$NGINX_SITE"
rm "$TEMP_FILE"

# Veryfy nginx configuration
nginx -t
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Error: nginx configuration test failed. Changes not applied."
    exit 1
fi

# Reload nginx
systemctl reload nginx

echo "Admin panel opened for IP: $IP"

and the second one to close the access:

#!/bin/bash

NGINX_SITE="/etc/nginx/sites-available/site"
TEMP_FILE="/tmp/site.tmp"

# Change allow to "allow 0.0.0.0;" so it should block all ips
awk '
  BEGIN {inside=0}
  /location \/admin/ {inside=1; print; next}
  inside && /allow/ {print "    allow 0.0.0.0;"; next}
  inside && /deny all/ {print; inside=0; next}
  {print}
' "$NGINX_SITE" > "$TEMP_FILE"

cp "$TEMP_FILE" "$NGINX_SITE"
rm "$TEMP_FILE"

nginx -t
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Error: nginx configuration test failed. Changes not applied."
    exit 1
fi

systemctl reload nginx

echo "Admin panel closed for everyone"

Any suggestions are very welcome. If you want to use it on your server - be welcome.

Regards,
Gover

 

[slaw]

I'm not special fan of doing this, but if you really want to restrict the access to admin folder, then you can adjust this variable in common.php:

const ADMIN_PANEL_FOLDER = 'admin';

Change it to your wish, and after that you need to also to rename the admin folder itself.

#edit
Ah I thought its support thread, now noticed its in tutorials.

Then take my words as alternative to the thread starter approach.