Using nginx to secure hidden content with a bit of cookie magic

Sometimes I host things that I don&rsquo;t want to be readily available on the open internet (or at least not easy to discover). It might be something that could do with an extra layer of obscurity. It might be a piece of third-party software to which I have no good insight into its security posture. Below is a neat trick to achieve this with a bit of nginx configuration magic alone, by…