Knowledge base → Disabling version display in nginx service

To increase the security of the nginx service, we recommend disabling the display of the version in the welcome headers when connecting.

This is done by adding a parameter to the main service configuration file:

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Before starting the configuration, connect to the port on which the service is running using telnet domain.tld 80.

Server: nginx/1.18.0
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:41:07 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 157
Connection: close

Now let's make changes to the configuration file by adding a parameter to the http section:

server_tokens off;

The configuration file will look something like this:

http {
        # Basic Settings
        charset utf-8;
        sendfile on;
        tcp_nopush on;
        tcp_nodelay on;
        log_not_found off;
        keepalive_timeout 65;
        types_hash_max_size 2048;
        client_max_body_size 16M;
        include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
        default_type application/octet-stream;
        # Hide Nginx version
        server_tokens   off;

Save the changes and restart the service:

service nginx restart

Check the service response again:

Server: nginx
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:43:24 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 150
Connection: close

Now the service version is not displayed in the greeting headers.