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[–] 117 points 5 months ago (46 children)

Kinda defeats the purpose of a media server built to be used by multiple people

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  • [–] 60 points 5 months ago (18 children)

    Use a VPN, it's not ideal but it's secure.

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  • [–] 44 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Somehow difficult to install on a TV though.

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  • [–] 24 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    That’s why you do it at your router or gateway and then set a route for the Jellyfin server through the VPN adapter. That way any device on your network will flow through the tunnel to the Jellyfin server including TVs

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  • [–] 46 points 5 months ago

    Which again implies that you have a router that allows you to do so. It's not always the case. For tech enthusiast people that's the case. But not for everyone.

    I tried to do the same thing at first, but it was a pain, there were tons of issues.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Oh yes, the routers and gateways that most people have that are isp provided that may not actually have open VPN or wireguard support.

    Those ones?

    Also putting a VPN in someone else's house so that all their Network traffic goes through your gateway is pretty damn extreme.

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago

    What? No, you can do a tiny reverse proxy/vpn on a stick with something like a RPi. Configure it and give it to them. Then they point their Jellyfin client on their device to the IP of the RPi instance on their network and that creates the tunnel back to your VPN endpoint and server.

    And for VPNs at a router level you can inject routes and leave th default route going out through your ISP, you don’t need to, nor want to, have all traffic going through it.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    Don’t reverse proxies like pangolin just do the job? Does it have to be VPN in this particular concept? VPN isn’t like immune to vulnerabilities.

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  • [–] 31 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Reverse proxy doesn't really get you much security. If there is an application level issue a reverse proxy will not help

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Hmmm, I'm a bit rusty on this but can't one put an auth gate in front of the application, handled by the reverse proxy?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You can, that would actually give you security. Not sure how many people do that. I assumed a straight reverse proxy without any auth

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I think that's one of the major reasons to use pangolin over something like nginx - built in auth and support for oidc.

    Of course, the native jellyfin apps don't like the auth layer so idk if it helps if you're trying to install it on your dad's tv

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Reverse proxy will let anyone connect to it. VPN, you can create keys/logins for your intended users only. Having said that, from what I could see, nothing in the security fixes were to do with authentication. I think (just from a cursory look), they could only be exploited, if at all from an authenticated user session.

    But personally, something like jellyfin where the number of people I want to be able to access it is very limited, stays behind a VPN. Better to limit your potential attack surface as much as you can.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Pangolin is based off of Traefik if I’m not mistaken, should be able to use Traefiks IPAllowlist middleware to blacklist all IP addresses and only whitelisting the known few, that way you can expose your application to the internet knowing you have that restriction in place for those who connect to your service.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    If the people you want to have access have static, exclusive ip addresses. Which is pretty unusual, these days.

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  • [+] 9 points 5 months ago (26 children)
  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Easy for me but not my aunts, cousins or father in law to setup and use.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    they are not setting up the Jellyfin server either, why would they need to bother with the VPN?

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (15 children)

    I'd rather just not use it at that point

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (12 children)

    you are better just closing up shop then, because it's not like the other services you are hosting are much better. vulnerabilities being discovered don't mean they don't exist, it just means the software is not popular enough or too complex for someone to look into it

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    lol the whole internet better shut down right? Too vulnerable

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  • [–] -5 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    much of the internet is run on simpler software or by full time employees tasked to deal with all this. but sure, ignorance is bliss, what you don't see does not exist, etc etc, keep running your Jellyfin exposed to the internet. you wouldnt even get to know when your system is compromised. but you know what? you could even remove your password for extra convenience. who would want to log in to a random jellyfin account anyway! surely no one! just don't recommend these practices to anyone, because you are putting them at risk.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I mean I do this stuff for a living but okay go off king

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  • [–] -4 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    would not ever use your services in that case

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    wow not just totally unprofessional, but even downvoting the calling out the lack of credible security! you can be ashamed of yourself, and hope that your clients never find out you are a contrarian

    I really doubt your work has anything to do with computers

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    You're hilarious. I haven't downvoted you, others are reading these threads as well.

    Talking about security... Have you heard of intrusion detection, process isolation, or principle of least privilege?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Talking about security... Have you heard of intrusion detection, process isolation, or principle of least privilege?

    are you aware that the very popular official docker image for jellyfin still runs the jellyfin process as root? or that most people just mount their media libraries as a read-write volume because they don't know better?

    I would also be very interested about statistics on how many jellyfin admins run intrusion detection software on their system, if you have any.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    I'm not running my stuff as root if I don't have to. You're moving goalposts

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    "if I don't have to". and, is your jellyfin running as root? or are you running it a different way, e.g. from apt package (where I believe it's sensible by default)? I smell doubt.

    but in either case it does not matter how do you run jellyfin. what I care is how many other people are running jellyfin exposed to the internet because they think its safe, because people on forums told them so, with the popular docker image where it is being ran as root.

    I'm not moving goalposts. I'm still firmly besides my point that for the general jellyfin admin exposing jellyfin to the wide internet is unsafe and irresponsible. and seeing all the downvotes but no one else telling their opinion, it seems no one knows better either and they are just angry I pointed this out.
    again, I don't care how are you running Jellyfin. I don't want to convince you on that, you do whats best for you, it seems you might have done some precautions. what I care is to not recommend these practices to others (without the full picture), because they are unsafe, especially without further precautions like running a(n unofficial) rootless jellyfin docker image and an intrusion detection system, which I guarantee most people won't have.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Which doesn't work for The grand majority of devices that would be used to watch said media.

    Tvs game consoles rokus so on so forth typically don't support VPN clients.

    The Jonathan clients for these devices also typically don't support alternative authentication methods which would allow you to put jellyfin behind a proxy and have the proxy exposed to the internet. Gating all access to jellyfin apis behind a primary authentication layer thus mitigating effectively all security vulnerabilities that are currently open.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago*

    Tvs game consoles rokus so on so forth typically don't support VPN clients.

    and that's why you set up a VPN client box on the location, set it up as a regular VPN client, and install a reverse proxy on it that the dumb clients can connect to.

    the VPN box could be as simple as an old android phone no one uses, and termux

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