Block nginx from serving .git directories

gistfile1.nginxconf

location ~ /\.git {
  deny all;
}

# or, all . directories/files in general (including .htaccess, etc)

location ~ /\. {
  deny all;
}

nice

Better don't spend resources for non-senses and return 444 that closes the connection, TCP RST is sent to the client, and all memory occupied by this socket is released.

location ~ /\. {
        deny all;
        return 444;
        access_log off;
}

Worth noting that return 444; just drops the connection (as far as I know) so, as @bsavelev mentioned, it might be better to return 404; if you want it to look like .git doesn't exist on the server.

Yes. I think it will be good to return 404 HTTP status code to let client side know requested resources are not found.

404 makes it such as if the resource is not even there. While otherwise h@ck0rs could potentially find files or directories by just looking at the HTTP status codes. Therefore, I do like 404 as well here.