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Remove XSS-Protection header from Nginx configs #9188

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Merged
merged 4 commits into from
Jul 1, 2025
Merged

Remove XSS-Protection header from Nginx configs #9188

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669ebf6
Disable XSS-Protection Header
minecrawler Sep 29, 2022
934e5d2
docs(admin): remove X-XSS-Protection header from hardening section
MichaIng Jun 28, 2025
74dbee7
docs(admin): add critical changes for Nextcloud 32
MichaIng Jun 30, 2025
7f87872
docs(admin): grammar/wording
MichaIng Jun 30, 2025
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2 changes: 0 additions & 2 deletions admin_manual/installation/harden_server.rst
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Expand Up @@ -221,8 +221,6 @@ These include:

- ``X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff``
- Instructs some browsers to not sniff the mimetype of files. This is used for example to prevent browsers from interpreting text files as JavaScript.
- ``X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block``
- Instructs browsers to enable their browser side Cross-Site-Scripting filter.
- ``X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow``
- Instructs search machines to not index these pages and not follow any links there.
- ``X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN``
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1 change: 0 additions & 1 deletion admin_manual/installation/nginx-root.conf.sample
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Expand Up @@ -79,7 +79,6 @@ server {
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;

# Remove X-Powered-By, which is an information leak
fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;
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1 change: 0 additions & 1 deletion admin_manual/installation/nginx-subdir.conf.sample
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Expand Up @@ -111,7 +111,6 @@ server {
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;

# Remove X-Powered-By, which is an information leak
fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions admin_manual/release_notes/index.rst
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Expand Up @@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ These sub pages will cover the most important changes in Nextcloud, as well as s
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1

upgrade_to_32.rst
upgrade_to_31.rst
upgrade_to_30.rst
upgrade_to_28.rst
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16 changes: 16 additions & 0 deletions admin_manual/release_notes/upgrade_to_32.rst
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@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
=======================
Upgrade to Nextcloud 32
=======================

System requirements
-------------------

* PHP 8.1 is now deprecated but still supported.
* PHP 8.4 is now supported, but 8.3 is recommended.
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@MichaIng MichaIng Jun 30, 2025 •
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Is this still accurate?

https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/master/lib/versioncheck.php


Web server configuration
------------------------

* Setup checks do not check for the ``X-XSS-Protection`` response header anymore. It has been removed from Nextcloud's ``.htaccess`` and you may want to adjust your webserver config to not serve it anymore.
XSS filtering was supported only until Chromium 78 and similarly old browsers, but had been found to cause more issues, including attack vectors, than it solved.
Nowadays, aside of not serving the header at all, the only generally recommended value is ``0``. More context can be found in the `OWASP Cheat Sheet Series <https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/HTTP_Headers_Cheat_Sheet.html#x-xss-protection>`_.