How to prevent Gunicorn from returning a 'Server' http header?

Question

I would like to mask the version or remove the header altogether.

Answer 1

It's better to change it to something unique than remove it. You don't want to risk, e.g., spiders thinking you're noncompliant. Changing it to the name of software you aren't using can cause similar problems. Making it unique will prevent the same kind of assumptions ever being made. I recommend something like this:

import gunicorn
gunicorn.SERVER_SOFTWARE = 'intentionally-undisclosed-gensym384763'

Answer 2

To change the 'Server:' http header, in your conf.py file:

 import gunicorn
 gunicorn.SERVER_SOFTWARE = 'Microsoft-IIS/6.0'

And use an invocation along the lines of gunicorn -c conf.py wsgi:app

To remove the header altogether, you can monkey-patch gunicorn by replacing its http response class with a subclass that filters out the header. This might be harmless, but is probably not recommended. Put the following in conf.py:

from gunicorn.http import wsgi

class Response(wsgi.Response):
    def default_headers(self, *args, **kwargs):
        headers = super(Response, self).default_headers(*args, **kwargs)
        return [h for h in headers if not h.startswith('Server:')]

wsgi.Response = Response

Tested with gunicorn 18

Answer 3

My mocky-patch free solution, involves wrapping the default_headers method:

import gunicorn.http.wsgi
from six import wraps


def wrap_default_headers(func):
    @wraps(func)
    def default_headers(*args, **kwargs):
        return [header for header in func(*args, **kwargs) if not header.startswith('Server: ')]
    return default_headers


gunicorn.http.wsgi.Response.default_headers = wrap_default_headers(gunicorn.http.wsgi.Response.default_headers)

Answer 4

This doesn't directly answer to the question but could address the issue as well and without monkey patching gunicorn.

If you are using gunicorn behind a reverse proxy, as it usually happens, you can set, add, remove or perform a replacement in a response header coming downstream from the backend. In our case the Server header.

I guess every Webserver should have an equivalent feature.

---

For example, in Caddy 2 (currently in beta) it would be something as simple as:

https://localhost {
    reverse_proxy unix//tmp/foo.sock {
        header_down Server intentionally-undisclosed-12345678
    }
}

For completeness I still add a minimal (but fully working) Caddyfile to handle Server header modification even in manual http->https redirect process (Caddy 2 does it automatically, if you don't override it), which could a bit tricky to figure it out correctly.

http://localhost {
    # Fact: the `header` directive has less priority than `redir` (which means
    # it's evaluated later), so the header wouldn't be changed (and Caddy would
    # shown instead of the faked value).
    #
    # To override the directive ordering only for this server, instead of
    # change the "order" option globally, put the configuration inside a
    # route directive.
    # ref.
    #   https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/options
    #   https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/route
    #   https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives#directive-order
    route {
        header Server intentionally-undisclosed-12345678
        redir https://{host}{uri}
    }
}

https://localhost {
    reverse_proxy unix//tmp/foo.sock {
        header_down Server intentionally-undisclosed-12345678
    }
}

To check if it works just use curl as curl --insecure -I http://localhost and curl --insecure -I http://localhost (--insecure because localhost certs are automatically generated as self signed).

It's so simple to setup that you could also think to use it in development (with gunicorn --reload), especially if it resembles your staging/production environment.

Answer 5

Easiest way -

For newer releases(20.0.4), create file gunicorn.conf.py with below contents in the directory from where you will run the gunicorn command -

import gunicorn
gunicorn.SERVER_SOFTWARE = 'My WebServer'

Answer 6

You can edit __init__.py to set SERVER_SOFTWARE to whatever you want. But I'd really like the ability to disable this with a flag so I didn't need to reapply the patch when I upgrade.