do you know for sure that nothing is listening on it? Do you scan every device you connect to your network?
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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This doesn’t really apply if you’re port forwarding to a specific device. In that case you know that you have told your firewall to forward port 80 & 443 (for example) to your web server and you know what ports that has open. I would not be using UPNP on the other hand as that seems dangerous especially in the IOT era.
Opening a port on consumer routers does not mean that all devices are open. Normally you forward a port to a host+port in the local network. In most cases some server which you control. All other devices are not affected by opening a port.
and, even if you scan them, how do you know that a port knocker isn't there waiting to the secret knock?
If you are behind CGNAT, you don't have a lot more options. Also, some may not want to expose their home IP.
It's typically against the terms of service to open ports less than 1024 (well known ports) of most ISP's for personal internet. That, and there are bots that probe for insecure and misconfigured stuff constantly. Spin up a VPS and take a look at the SSH logs. What if a zero day vulnerability occurs? Are you going to be able to react quick enough to prevent someone from doing damage?
Cloudflare is nice because you no longer need to update your DNS A records, plus it caches data, automatically enables SSL, and absorbs bot traffic for you. Have also tried the Wireguard + VPS route, but that gets expensive because most charge ingress and egress.
It's typically against the terms of service to run any server.
I don't like opening ports on my home router, because of the destination services behind the port forwarding. As long as those are secure there are no problems. But if a service has a vulnerability, someone could takeover my home network and creep around. That's scary.
When people use Cloudflare Tunnels to publish their stuff, they usually still have that problem. The idea is that Cloudflare is intrinsically safe and would block all attacks. I don't necessarily agree with that. But I assume it's safer than having no security layer between at all.
But whats the difference between having the reverse proxy on a VPS pointing to you homelab via a VPN or having this Reverse Proxy directly attached to a port? Just from „takeover perspektive“ there should be no no difference
Yes, I agree. Security wise I also don't see a benefit in hosting the reverse proxy externally. I believe a dynamic DNS provider with a low TTL for the DNS records should work as good or perhaps even better. Not better security wise, but simpler setup, more reliable.