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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Why VPN tunnels are safer than opening a port on my router? (programming.dev)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi!

I often read suggestions to use something like Tailscale to create a tunnel between a home server and a VPS because it is allegedly safer than opening a port for WireGuard (WG) or Nginx on my router and connecting to my home network that way.

However, if my VPS is compromised, wouldn't the attacker still be able to access my local network? How does using an extra layer (the VPS) make it safer?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

By learning before you take on the risk.

It's not like this isn't well documented.

If OP is asking this question, he's nowhere near knowledgeable enough to take on this risk.

Hell, I've been Cisco certified as an instructor since 1998 and I wouldn't expose a port. Fuck that.

I could open a port today, and within minutes I'll be getting hammered with port scans.

I did this about 10 years ago as a demonstration, and was immediately getting thousands of scans per second, eventually causing performance issues on the consumer-grade router.