How to delete IIS custom headers like X-Powered-By: ASP.NET from response?

In IIS 7.0 integrated mode after deleting all headers with Response.ClearHeaders() IIS would add some other headers like Server and X-Powered-By which reveals good information to hackers. How can I stop this behavior (consider I still need to add my custom headers) ?


You can add this to your Web.Config:

<system.webServer>
    <httpProtocol>
        <customHeaders>
            <remove name="X-Powered-By" />
        </customHeaders>
    </httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>

Update: if you're using the MVC framework I would also recommend removing the X-AspNetMvc-Version and X-AspNet-Version headers as well. This is accomplished by setting MvcHandler.DisableMvcResponseHeader = true in your Global.asax file and <system.web><httpRuntime enableVersionHeader="false" /></system.web> in your Web.config respectively.


The X-Powered-By is configured within IIS. On Windows 7 it's specifically:

  1. IIS Manager
  2. COMPUTER NAME > Sites > Default Web Site
  3. HTTP Respons Headers
  4. Remove X-Powered-By

I'm not sure what generates the Server header though.


For IIS7+ integrated mode, eth0 has it: <customHeaders> tag in web.config. Thanks for that. As for the "Server" header, if using MVC, you can simply add:

    protected void Application_PreSendRequestHeaders()
    {
        Response.Headers.Remove("Server");
    }

to your MvcApplication class in Global.asax. Otherwise, you can simply add a custom Http Module, handling the PreSendRequestHeaders event, and do the same thing.


Would like to add here that for the ASP.NET Core versions where there is no longer a web.config file a different approach is necessary.

I made the following adjustments to remove the headers in ASP.NET Core 2.1:

You can remove the x-powered-by header by replacing

<customHeaders>
        <clear />
        <add name="X-Powered-By" value="ASP.NET" />
</customHeaders>

with

<customHeaders>
        <remove name="X-Powered-By" />
</customHeaders>

in the applicationhost.config file found in the .vs\config folder of the project.

The server header can be removed by adding

.UseKestrel(c => c.AddServerHeader = false)

in the Program.cs file.