nginx on Linux: which version fixes what

What it is, and why it is on your server

nginx is the web server and reverse proxy in front of most modern Linux deployments, terminating TLS, serving static files, and forwarding the rest to an application behind it.

Why its advisories behave the way they do

• Parsing is the attack surface. The dangerous advisories are in how nginx reads a request line, a header, or a chunked body, because that code runs before any of your application logic does.
• The module set matters as much as the version. Several advisories only apply if a particular module is compiled in, and the distribution package and the nginx.org package do not ship the same set.
• It usually runs as root to bind port 80 and 443, then drops to an unprivileged worker. The master process staying root is what makes a worker compromise worth escalating.

Check what you are actually running

The version that matters is the package version, not the upstream one. Distributions backport security fixes without changing the number before the dash, so a release that looks years old is frequently fully patched, and the revision after the dash is the only part that tells you.

dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version}\n' nginx nginx-core 2>/dev/null

rpm -q nginx

Running `nginx -V` prints the modules the binary was actually built with, which is what several advisories turn on.

Fixed versions, per distribution

Each distribution patches on its own schedule and under its own version scheme, so the same CVE has a different answer on each of them. These come from the distributions’ own advisory data, asked per release. Where a release has no fixed version, that is what the advisory says, not a gap in the data.

Advisory data last refreshed 26 September 2026. It is re-read daily.

What this page does not tell you

It does not tell you whether your server is affected. A CVE applying to a package is not the same as a CVE applying to your installation: the fix may already be backported into what you are running, the vulnerable module may not be loaded, or the service may not be reachable from anywhere that matters. Answering that needs the versions on your machine, not a list.

It also carries no count of how many servers are affected. SecAI monitors a small fleet, and a percentage drawn from it would be arithmetic on a sample too small to mean anything. When that changes, the number will appear here and the page will say when it started.

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