Fixing Imgur Error 403 "Over Capacity" with AdGuard & Docker

You know the drill: you’re scrolling through Reddit or digging through old forum threads, you click an image, and instead of the content, you get hit with this raw JSON response:

{
  "data": {
    "error": "Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later."
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": 403
}

If you see this, don’t believe it. It is usually not a real capacity issue. It’s a blanket “forbidden” response because your IP or ISP is blocked. It turns out my ISP, Iliad (Italy), has its ASN banned by Imgur.

I stumbled upon this excellent post by Tymscar who solved a similar issue in the UK using Traefik. However, my stack is different: I run AdGuard Home for DNS and Caddy as my reverse proxy.

Since Caddy already occupies port 443 on my server, I couldn’t just spin up another proxy on the host. Here is how I solved it using a Docker Macvlan network and Cloudflare WARP.

The Architecture

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1. AdGuard Home rewrites *.imgur.com and imgur.com to a specific, static IP on my LAN that tunnels the HTTPS traffic.
2. A Docker Container listens on that specific IP (bypassing the host’s port conflicts given that it behaves as another device).
3. Gluetun tunnels the traffic through Cloudflare WARP to exit the Iliad network.
4. Nginx inspects the SNI and forwards the traffic to the real Imgur servers.

Step 1: Get Cloudflare WARP Keys

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I needed WireGuard credentials for the free Cloudflare WARP tier. You can use wgcf to generate a profile. Run this snippet to generate the wgcf-profile.conf file containing your keys:

curl -Lo wgcf https://github.com/ViRb3/wgcf/releases/download/v2.2.23/wgcf_2.2.23_linux_amd64
chmod +x wgcf
./wgcf register --accept-tos
./wgcf generate
# Open 'wgcf-profile.conf' to extract Private/Public keys and Endpoint IP
rm wgcf # Clean up, we don't need the binary anymore

Step 2: The Nginx Config (nginx.conf)

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This uses dynamic SNI to handle i.imgur.com, imgur.com, and any other subdomain automatically without SSL termination.

user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
events { worker_connections 1024; }

stream {
    resolver 1.1.1.1 valid=30s;
    server {
        listen 443;
        ssl_preread on;
        # Dynamic forwarding based on what the browser asked for
        proxy_pass $ssl_preread_server_name:443; 
        proxy_connect_timeout 10s;
        proxy_timeout 60s;
    }
}

Step 3: Docker Compose

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The magic here is the macvlan network. It gives the container its own physical presence on the network, completely separate from my main server IP.

Note: I’ve picked a PROXY_STATIC_IP that is valid for my subnet and I’ve statically assigned it to the mac_address specified in the docker-compose.yaml below. If you do not specify a mac_address, it will be always random, defeating the purpose of having a statically assigned IP.

services:
  gluetun:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun:latest
    container_name: imgur-warp
    cap_add: [ "NET_ADMIN" ]
    devices: [ "/dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun" ]
    environment:
      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=custom
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard
      # Cloudflare WARP Keys (From Step 1)
      - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY
      - WIREGUARD_PUBLIC_KEY=YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY
      - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=172.16.0.2/32
      # Hardcoded WARP Endpoint
      - VPN_ENDPOINT_IP=162.159.192.1
      - VPN_ENDPOINT_PORT=2408
      # Allow local access
      - FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETS=YOUR_LOCAL_SUBNET_CIDR # e.g. 192.168.1.0/24
    networks:
      vpc_net:
        ipv4_address: PROXY_STATIC_IP # e.g. 192.168.1.253
        mac_address: 02:42:C0:A8:01:FD # Static MAC for DHCP reservation
    restart: unless-stopped

  imgur-proxy:
    image: nginx:alpine
    container_name: imgur-proxy
    depends_on:
      gluetun: { condition: service_healthy }
    network_mode: "service:gluetun"
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro
    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  vpc_net:
    driver: macvlan
    driver_opts:
      parent: YOUR_INTERFACE_NAME # e.g. enp2s0, eth0
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: YOUR_LOCAL_SUBNET_CIDR
          gateway: YOUR_GATEWAY_IP

Step 4: AdGuard Rewrite

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Finally, I added two DNS rewrites in AdGuard Home to redirect traffic to the container.

1. Domain: *.imgur.com → Answer: PROXY_STATIC_IP
2. Domain: imgur.com → Answer: PROXY_STATIC_IP

Now, every device on my network loads Imgur content instantly, completely transparently, while bypassing the ISP block.