Mod_security ruleset for Joomla! admin

I'm not sure if this has been solved but this nginx config works for my joomla installation.

server {
  server_name example.com;
  rewrite ^ http://www.example.com$request_uri permanent;
 }
server {
  server_name www.example.com;
  root /home/public_html/example.com/public;
  error_page   404          /404.html;
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$request_uri;

  index index.php index.htm index.html;
  # serve static files directly
  location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html)$ {
    access_log off;
    expires 30d;
  }
  location 404.html{
    index /404.html;
  }
  location ~* \.php$ {
    # By all means use a different server for the fcgi processes if you need to
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
    fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
  }
  location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
  }
}

I usually do this type of thing by inserting a known password hash directly into whatever database you're using with joomla. Assuming you have ample privileges on the database, you should be able to do this through either the CLI or phpMyAdmin.

I am not familiar with Joomla's database schema, but there should be something like a "users" table. Inside of that table, there should be a "password" column, containing password hashes, one for each user. You should be able to replace the password hash for your admin user with a known-good hash, either from a different Joomla install or from another Joomla user.