How to set a rule for nginx to exclude all requests except for a few allowed paths?

Question

Nginx

Recently, bots have become more active, knocking on well-known vulnerabilities. I would like to close all requests (which may be misinterpreted by the engine), except for those that start with certain folders. For example, allowed:

• /news/
  
• /forum/
  
• /shop/
  

And all the rest, which do not start with these folders, immediately received 404.
I want to place it after all the main locations, so that it does not interfere with the implementation of the main directions.

Answer 1

You can make 3 locations, and take the root to 404.
You can do 1 location ^/(news|forum|shop), and take the root to 404.
You can make a map with a regular request_uri and take away from the variable to 404.
I like the second option: )