🚀 Distroless FreeNGINX: Hardened & Optimized image

Production-ready, security-focused FreeNGINX image with HTTP/3, QUIC, ECH and PQC support.

Warning

🗄️ The project is archived and no longer maintained

This project has reached end-of-life and is no longer actively maintained. No further updates, bug fixes, security patches, or feature additions will be provided.

👉 Please migrate to: github.com/ammnt/nginx

The successor project provides the same hardened, distroless, security-focused approach with ongoing maintenance, up-to-date dependencies, and continued security patching. We strongly recommend all users migrate to ensure they receive critical updates.

Thank you to everyone who used this image❤️

Important

The QuicTLS is now deprecated. I use OpenSSL, since this library natively supports OCSP, PQC, ECH and QUIC⚠️

Tip

You can find an example configuration file in the repository for successfully configuring HTTP/3, ECH and PQC💡

Important

UID/GID changed to 10001 - it's recommended for Kubernetes and prevents conflicts with system users⚠️

🌐 Image Variants

Docker Hub:

ammnt/freenginx

GitHub Container Registry:

ghcr.io/ammnt/freenginx

📦 Quick Start

Docker Run

docker run -d \
  --name freenginx \
  -p 80:8080 \
  -p 443:8443 \
  ammnt/freenginx

🔧 Advanced Configuration

🎯 Recommended to use in Rootless mode:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/

Docker Compose (Recommended)

services:
  freenginx:
    image: ammnt/freenginx:latest
    user: "10001:10001"
    read_only: true
    privileged: false
    tmpfs:
     - /tmp:mode=1700,size=1G,noexec,nosuid,nodev,uid=10001,gid=10001
    cap_drop:
     - all
    container_name: freenginx
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges=true
      - apparmor=docker-freenginx
      - seccomp=./freenginx-seccomp.json
    volumes:
      - "./conf:/etc/freenginx:ro"
...

Example Deployment (PSS Restricted Level Compliant)

apiVersion: v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: freenginx-pss-restricted
spec:
  containers:
  - name: freenginx
    image: ammnt/freenginx:latest
    securityContext:
      capabilities:
        drop:
          - ALL
      privileged: false
      runAsUser: 10001
      runAsGroup: 10001
      seccompProfile:
        type: RuntimeDefault
      runAsNonRoot: true
      readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
      allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
...

Repository structure

freenginx/
├── 🔧 AGENTS.md                         # Dedicated file that guides AI coding agents
├── 📜 CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md                # Code of Conduct for contributors
├── 🤝 CONTRIBUTING.md                   # Contributing guidelines
├── 🔑 cosign.pub                        # Public key for image signing (Sigstore/cosign)
├── ⚙️ default.conf                      # Default FreeNGINX configuration
├── 🐳 dive-ci.yml                       # Dive configuration for Docker image analysis
├── 🐳 Dockerfile.template               # Dockerfile template (dynamic generation)
├── 🙈 .dockerignore                     # Files to exclude from Docker build context
├── ⚙️ .editorconfig                     # EditorConfig for consistent coding styles
├── 🔧 .env                              # Environment variables configuration
├── 📄 example.conf                      # Example FreeNGINX configuration for HTTP/3
├── 🚀 freenginx.conf                    # Main FreeNGINX configuration file
├── 🛡️ freenginx-seccomp.json            # Seccomp profile for FreeNGINX security
├── 📦 freenginx.toml                    # Additional FreeNGINX configuration (TOML format)
├── ⚙️ .gitattributes                    # Git attributes configuration
├── 📁 .github/                          # GitHub-specific configuration
│   ├── 📋 dependabot.yml                # Automated dependency updates
│   ├── 📁 ISSUE_TEMPLATE/               # Issue creation templates
│   │   ├── 🐛 bug_report.md             # Bug report template
│   │   ├── ⚙️ config.yml                # Issue templates configuration
│   │   └── 💡 feature_request.md        # Feature request template
│   ├── 🏷️ labeler.yml                   # PR labeler configuration
│   ├── 📝 PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md      # Pull Request template
│   └── 📁 workflows/                    # GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines
│       ├── 🔨 build.yml                 # Build and testing workflow
│       ├── 🔒 codeql.yml                # Static security analysis (CodeQL)
│       └── 🏷️ label.yml                 # Workflow for triage PR and apply labels
├── 🙈 .gitignore                        # Git ignore rules
├── ✅ hadolint.yaml                     # Hadolint configuration (Dockerfile linter)
├── ⚖️ LICENSE                           # License agreement
├── 📖 README.md                         # Main project documentation
├── 🔒 SECURITY.md                       # Security policy and vulnerability reporting
└── 🔍 trivy.yaml                        # Trivy configuration (vulnerability scanning)

🔥 Why Choose This Image?

Compiler Options Hardening Guide (OpenSSF Best Practices) providing comprehensive security:

• Memory protection - stack smashing protection and stack clash protection
• Control Flow Integrity - full CFI protection against ROP/JOP attacks via Intel CET
• Initialization hardening - automatic variable initialization to prevent data leaks
• Binary hardening - position independent executable for full ASLR (PaX, Linux kernel)
• Runtime protections - FORTIFY_SOURCE level 3 for buffer overflow detection
• C++ assertions - enhanced standard library security checks
• Linker hardening - read-only relocations and immediate binding, no-exec stack, separate code/data segments and CET enforcement
• Compiler warnings - comprehensive warning set with errors for critical issues
• Compiler - Clang/LLVM 22 toolchain with LLD linker

Runtime Security

• Rootless by design - unprivileged runtime user (Docker Bench Security, OCI Runtime Specification)
• Distroless base - built from scratch with zero bloat (SLSA Level 3 requirements)
• Minimal attack surface - no shell, no package manager, and no unnecessary modules (CIS Docker Benchmark, Principle of Least Privilege)
• Server header removal - anonymous signature ("security through obscurity")
• Kubernetes PSS compliant - fully conforms to Pod Security Standards (baseline & restricted)
• Docker security standards - follows CIS Docker Benchmarks and best practices
• Native QUIC and HTTP/3 support - OpenSSL and QUIC without patches or experimental implementations (RFC 9114, RFC 9000)
• Native PQC support - hybrid post-quantum key exchange algorithms in elliptic curves (NIST PQC Standardization, FIPS 203/204/205)
• Native TLS 1.3 with 0-RTT (RFC 8446, RFC 9001)
• Native support for the Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) - extension of the TLS 1.3 protocol (RFC 9849)

Supply Chain Integrity

• Signed images - signatures and provenance attestation (SLSA Level 3 requirements, in-toto attestations)
• Comprehensive scanning by security tools (Scout, Trivy, Snyk, Grype, Dockle, Hadolint, Checkov)
• SBOM generation with Syft (NTIA Software Component Transparency)

🚀 Ultimate Optimization

Size Optimization

• Multi-stage build with Alpine builder + scratch final image (Dockerfile best practices, BuildKit optimizations)
• Static compilation - static binary with minimal dependencies
• Mint tool integration - slimmed version of the image
• UPX runtime efficiency - minimal memory overhead with fast decompression (Executable compression)
• Binary stripping and size optimization and LTO optimization - debug symbols removed, dead code eliminated (DWARF debugging standard, ELF size reduction)

Performance Features

• zlib-ng with modern compression algorithms (RFC 1950, RFC 1951, RFC 1952)
• PCRE2 with JIT compilation for regex performance
• NJS with QuickJS-NG - JavaScript scripting support with modern engine
• Thread pool support for async I/O operations
• TCP Fast Open and SSL session resumption (RFC 7413, RFC 8446)
• Graceful shutdown - SIGQUIT handling for proper connection draining (RFC 7230)
• Brotli and ZSTD compression mechanisms support (RFC 7932, RFC 8878)
• Native TLS compression - support for certificate compression (RFC 8879)

Quality Metrics

• Image efficiency - perfect score in Dive analysis (100%)
• Comprehensive OCI labels - standardized metadata and annotations
• No excess ENTRYPOINT - no unnecessary wrapper scripts or bloat (12-factor app methodology, Cloud Native patterns)
• Built-in HEALTHCHECK - Configuration validation every 30s with 10s timeout (Docker HEALTHCHECK specification)

🤝 Contributing & Support

Found an issue or have an improvement?

• Open an Issue
• Feature Request

Note: This image is designed for security-conscious production environments. For development purposes, consider using the official FreeNGINX image with full debugging capabilities.

📄 License

This project is open source and maintained with ❤️ by ammnt.