- cross-posted to:
- jellyfin@lemmy.ml
- jellyfin@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- jellyfin@lemmy.ml
- jellyfin@lemmy.ml
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Thank you for posting this. I tend to get a lot of my opensource project info from Lemmy so people who take the time to post it are awesome.
Just updated my home instance. Can confirm that 10.11.7 is available in the Debian repos and the update went perfect. I got a new kernel in the same update : D
Is it standard practice to release the security updates on GitHub?
I am a very amateur self hoster and wouldn’t go on the github of projects on my own unless I wanted to read the “read me” for install instructions. I am realizing that I got aware I needed to update my Jellyfin container ASAP only thanks to this post. I would have never checked the GitHub.
Is it standard practice to release the security updates on GitHub?
Yes.
And then the maintainers of the package on the package repository you use will release the patch there. Completely standard operation.
I recommend younto read up on package repositories on Linux and package maintainers etc.
Not really.
Depending on how you install things, the package maintainers usually deal with this, so your next
apt update/pacman -Syuvor … whatever Fedora does… would capture it.If you’ve installed this as a container… dunno… whatever the container update process is (I don’t use them)
Unattended upgrades set to security only and never worry
It’s difficult to do security-only updates when the fix is contained within a package update.
Even Microsoft’s security updates are a mix with secuirity updates containing feature changes and vice versa.
I usually do an update on 1 random device / VM and if that was ok (inc. watching for any
.pacnewfiles) and then kick Ansible into action for the rest.
I indeed use a container. Wasn’t familiar with the update process for containers but now know how to do it.
Lol it’s already insecure then. Don’t bother.
There’s a lot of good container management solutions out there that are worth investigating. They do things like monitor availability, resource management, as well as altering on versioning.
I am realizing that I got aware
I don’t run the arr stack, but this is key. You really should do your due diligence before you update anything. Personally, I wait unless it’s a security issue, and use all the early adopters as beta testers.
I forgot that it’s April first, and was wondering what catasthropic event had happend in order that it had to be stated in the title that its not a joke
Don’t expose jellyfin to the internet is a golden rule.
If only they would fix the htaccess bug
Don’t ever shit in your own house, either.
Just in case they’re watching.
That’s never made sense to me; why build an authn frontend instead of just clicking your user if the security is just an illusion anyways. “Use a VPN” is fine for a mainframe, but an active project in 2026 should aspire to be better.
Edit: or make note of that on their several pages with reverse proxy configuration.
Examples dating back over six years https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
there is just too much place in the codebase for vulnerabilities, and also, most projects like this are maintained by volunteers in their free time for free.
I guess if you set up an IP whitelist in the reverse proxy, or a client TLS certificate requirement, it’s fine to open it to the internet, but otherwise no.
If I say I custom rolled my own crypto and it’s designed to be deployed to the open web, and you inspect it and don’t see anything wrong, should you do it?
Jellyfin is young and still in heavy development. As time goes on, more eyes have seen it, and it’s been battle hardened, the security naturally gets stronger and the risk lower. I don’t agree that no one should ever host a public jellyfin server for all time, but for right now, it should be clear that you’re assuming obvious risk.
Technically there’s no real problem here. Just like with any vulnerability in any service that’s exposed in some way, as long as you update right now you’re (probably) fine. I just don’t want staying on top of it to be a full time job, so I limit my attack surface by using a VPN.
Young.
The original ticket is 2019. That’s 7 years ago.
Technically there’s no real problem here.
It responds to and serves content to unauthenticated requests. That’s sorta table stakes if you’re creating an authenticated web service and providing guides to set it up with a reverse proxy.
Ok, I misread what you were linking to. Yeah, that’s pretty bad to allow actual streaming of content to unauthed users. I agree they should not be encouraging anyone to set this up to be publicly accessible until those are fixed. Or at least add a warning.
I mean I’m sure they’d like to just ship safe code in the first place. But if that’s not their expertise and they demonstrate that repeatedly, we gotta take steps ourselves. Secure is obviously best, but I’d rather have insecure Jellyfin behind a VPN than no Jellyfin at all.
It’s not this or that. Security comes in layers. So while I would assume that the Jellyfin developers do their best to secure their application, I acknowledge the fact that bugs do exist and that Jellyfin is developed in and for hobbyist contexts, and thus not scrutinised and pentested for vulnerabilities in the way software meant for professional environments would be. Therefore I’ll add an extra layer of security by putting it behind a VPN that only whitelisted clients can access. If a vulnerability is detected, I can be sure it hasn’t already been exploited to compromise my server because we’re all “among friends” there.
Lol you shouldn’t make such assumptions when they so obviously place sefiroty last
It never made sense why you shouldn’t expose jellyfin to the internet?
I mean I think your link tells the story right?
Unfortunately, not everyone is tech-literate enough nowadays to understand how a VPN works, nor do they want to
Yes, not everyone. My grandmother would struggle setting up a VPN, for example.
However, a community member of the selfhosted community is perfectly capable of reading a manual and learning the software.
That’s how you become tech literate in the first place, and you’re already on that path if you’re commenting/reading here.
Yes, not everyone. My grandmother would struggle setting up a VPN, for example.
that’s a weird take. your grandmother doesn’t need to set up a VPN. It’s not like this is where they would get stuck, they would have problems much sooner with running their own Jellyfin. that’s why you are hosting it for them, and why you go there and set the VPN up yourself.
I was not actually presenting a scenario where my grandmother would use a VPN.
I was pointing out that this community is full of people who are perfectly capable of learning to use a VPN. In response to this comment:
Unfortunately, not everyone is tech-literate enough nowadays to understand how a VPN works, nor do they want to
That’s a true statement about ‘everyone’ i.e. the entire population of the planet… but true about everyone here in this community.
Agreed, was more so referring to others. I apologize if it seemed like I was referring to myself
I’m already well and truly deep into this, myself. Two Proxmox nodes running the *Arr stack and Jellyfin in LXC containers. Bare metal TrueNAS, with scheduled LTO backups every two weeks. A few other bits and bobs, like some game servers and home automation for family.
Will need to re-map everything eventually, it’s kind of grown out of hand
Look at Tailscale (or self-host headscale)
It’s a bit of learning (like all of these other things) but it’s a very powerful tool.
I do agree with the general point that Jellyfin shouldn’t require a VPN.
Isn’t it easier to set up a VPN than expose it to the internet?
and then you are giving access to your lan to people whose computer you don’t control and might be full of malware.
Tbh I forgot about giving access to others, my homelab is for me only lol
You only have to give them access to a specific port on a specific machine, not your entire LAN.
My VPN has a ‘media’ usergroup who can only access the, read-only, NFS exports of my media library.
If you’re just installing Wireguard and enabling IP forwarding, yeah it would not be secure. But using a mesh VPN, like Tailscale/Headscale, gives you A LOT more tools to control access.
yeah but even with plain wireguard the peers can be limited. you just have to figure out the firewall rules, or use opnsense as your wireguard server because it figures the harder part out for you.
Oh absolutely, difference being that you only need to expose the service once, versus helping however many people set up VPNs to access the service on your LAN
I know way too many people who won’t remember to toggle it on, or just won’t deal with it
It’s just not convenient enough
I know way too many people who won’t remember to toggle it on, or just won’t deal with it
they need a VPN app that toggles automatically. turn off when they happen to connect to your network, otherwise on, and only forward jellyfin and such apps through it.
I know way too many people who won’t remember to toggle it on, or just won’t deal with it
they need a VPN app that toggles automatically. turn off when they happen to connect to your network, otherwise on, and only forward jellyfin and such apps through it.
Kinda defeats the purpose of a media server built to be used by multiple people
Use a VPN, it’s not ideal but it’s secure.
Somehow difficult to install on a TV though.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reverse proxy doesn’t really get you much security. If there is an application level issue a reverse proxy will not help
well, at least you are not depending on the application to do TLS properly, and you may be able to set up some access restrictions that your clients may support
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?
You can, that would actually give you security. Not sure how many people do that. I assumed a straight reverse proxy without any auth
I see thanks. I’ll think about it more.
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.
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 connections.
If the people you want to have access have static, exclusive ip addresses. Which is pretty unusual, these days.
Oh yeah I’m aware, if people don’t want to use a VPN then I suggest this but give them the advisory warning.
Actually, recently I’ve been using a fork of IPAllowList which accepts DDNS addresses, but that usually is for more technical folk who would probably rather use a VPN then purchase a domain and associate it with their network.
Yahnlets see a roku use a VPN.
No need to expose jellyfin to the internet if you selectively allow peers on your lan via wireguard.
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.
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
Easy for me but not my aunts, cousins or father in law to setup and use.
they are not setting up the Jellyfin server either, why would they need to bother with the VPN?
Nor will the VPN work on things like their TV or Roku or game console. You know the things that people typically sit down and watch media on…
Wireguard and possibly openvpn work on Android TVs. I set it up for my mom. Not sure about other OSs.
I believe your situation, that said I set up wireguard on my SO’s mac and all that is needed is to flip a switch in an app to connect. For my aunt, I’d likely set that up permanently since it only affects traffic when accessing the lan.
This attitude is why Plex remains popular.
I’d rather just not use it at that point
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
Fair, you do you, I get a lot of value out of it instead.
The difference is that my friends get a lot of value out of my server, as they don’t need to use any technology they’re unfamiliar with.
Y’all are assuming the security issue is something exploitable without authentication or has something to do with auth.
But it it could be a supply chain issue which a VPN won’t protect you from.
to be fair, Jellyfin had multiple unauthenticated vulnerabilities in the past so it makes sense to talk about it
Yeah, i have my 30 docker containers behind Headscale (Tailscale).
NetBird is coming for you
I have been planning to check out Netbird for couple of days. Is it a good alternative for headscale and pangolin?
It depends if you’re using Pangolin for private access or public exposure.
NetBird is a clean replacement for headscale/tailscale, but if your using pangolin specifically for its public tunnel feature then you’d need to keep pangolin.
Mainly use pangolin for public access, I’m looking for something/somehow add authentication for pangolin while trying to access endpoint in apps where it’s not exactly possible to directly authenticate in pangolin
The thing is, if you have non-technical users, you have to set up the VPN connection on the client site yourself, maybe on multiple machines and more than once, if they decide to upgrade or even just reset their devices.
The problem here - it’s not me who requires access to my library, if someone isn’t willing or able to do it, I’m sorry but that’s just how it is. People should stop infantilize non-technical people, absolute majority of them is capable of navigating our world without much problems and I’m willing to help them if help is asked.
If my 60 y.o. mother with close to zero technical skills can do it with limited help (due to distance and other constraints) I’m pretty sure that majority of people with sound mind can.
Or you can not be arrogant towards your friends and family who have probably helped you on lots of occasions and will probably keep being there for you in the future.
Idk man, unconditional sharing feels pretty good, tbh. Making them jump through hoops isn’t really my jam. To me this kinda all plays into making a stronger bond with people that are close to me, so maybe we have different reasons for why we are sharing our stuff.Inb4 “we are not the same” meme
I’m not arrogant, just don’t assume that people are dumb and inept. If they can’t or don’t want to give a bit of time to setup it, well how can someone be forced to use free service that causes momentarily inconvenience once to use. 😔
Idk man, unconditional sharing feels pretty good
Pass. Users cause complexities. Complexities cause issues.
Users cause issues. Programs cause issues. Connecting it to the internet causes issues. Having a computer causes issues. Better turn your laptop off and throw it on the garbage.
The difference being, I can control computers, laptops, servers, etc. I cannot control users.
This. And for everyone you just can’t figure it out on their own, there’s RustDesk for remote assistance. It, too, can be self-hosted.
So use a reverse proxy with authentiacation before access to Jellyfin is allowed. I use Caddy forward_auth with Authelia for this. Unless you also want to use the apps without VPN, this works great.
Does that work for the Android and Android TV apps?
No. As I said, apps don’t work. I cobbled together an API key service that let’s you have an API key (password) in the server URL in Rust for myself. This works with Apps, but it is a bit too messy and single purpose for me to open source it right now. Maybe one day.
Got instructions or a site to point to on setting something like that up?
Honestly, I may have to write one at some point. I just used the documentation of those two tools to set it up.
Utilize authelia perhaps?
Doesn’t work with TVs
ldap auth will work on tvs
But that’s basically using the same built-in auth. If there’s an auth bypass I don’t think it makes a difference.
not really. you can disable the default jellyfin login and force it to use ONLY ldap.
or use the ldap auth plugin with your source of truth, put it behind a reverse proxy, protect it with fail2ban and anubis. there are ways of exposing it safely.
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that’s nonsense. I do it myself and it works flawlessly, including on TVs.
you totally can use ldap or oidc it just requires more setup. you just ensure jellyfin and your source of truth talk on their own subnet, docker can manage it all for you. ldap can be setup to be ldaps with ssl and never even leave the docker subnet anyways.
and yes I suppose you could rely on whitelists, but you’d have to manually add to the whitelist for every user, and god forbid if someone is traveling.
So don’t use it outside your house? Pass
Nothing stops you from using it outside of your house.
I just love it when people post one sentence rebuttals without actually including any usable information what they are talking about.
the usable information is information that’s so widely talked about in this community that they probably expected anyone who is reading this to know what they’re talking about.
clearly there are still people who have no experience self-hosting whatsoever that we should be considerate of.
Tailscale is a super easy vpn that gives you access to your home network from anywhere. And it’s free.
The solution is mentioned already - use vpn, it will solve 90% of the problems that you can encounter. Also you can serve multiple other services this way without exposing them.
It kind of does. Whatever and yes I’m aware of the list people keep posting and I’ve looked at it.
Thanks for this post, i would have updated mine next semester…
thanks for posting this!
Pretty flawless update from the apt repo on my end.
Server version 10.11.7Yeah, I think what went wrong and now everything is installed through Docker.
Docker feels like a huge security problem to me.
There is a good reason I only have Jellyfin and other services accessible via valid Client Certificate.
Does it work with android and TV apps?
I tried long ago and failed.
No, we only use Jellyfin via browser. Unfortunately even with imported Client Cert, Android apps won’t work.
Edit: Client Certs need to be implemented per App. There is a feature request from 2022 https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/1461/capability-to-specify-client-certificate-for-android-client
Also interested how this works for mobile apps. I self host a number of services through caddy as my reverse proxy but each application is just dependent on it’s own authentication. If I exposed all my services to the internet, that’s a huge attack vector. If anyone else has some ideas I’d be happy to listen.
If you are the only user and don’t need to use those apps in devices you don’t own a vpn is the way to go.
If not. Depending the number of users you could do some heavy ip geoblocking to at least reduce the exposed surface.
There are a few services I have just like 3 IPs allowed to get a response from caddy, any other ip gets 403 error.
Wonder if it’s the Axios one. Sounds like it isn’t from their description though hmm
I don’t think so, the previous release 10.11.6 is a few months old and the axios supply chain attack happened yesterday.
So lets hope this 10.11.7 is not subject to the axios one. :)
Diff agrees, not likely. Might be permisson related, elevation of privileges.
From a cursory look at just the security commits. Looks like the following:
- GHSA-j2hf-x4q5-47j3: Checks if a media shortcut is empty, and checks if it is remote and stores the remote protocol if so. Also prevent strm files (these are meant to contain links to a stream) from referencing local files. Indeed this might have been used to reference files jellyfin couldn’t usually see?
- GHSA-8fw7-f233-ffr8: Seems to be similar, except for M3U file link validation and limiting allowed protocols. It also changes the default permissions for live TV management to false.
- GHSA-v2jv-54xj-h76w: When creating a structure there should be a limit of 200 characters for a string which was not enforced.
- GHSA-jh22-fw8w-2v9x: Not really completely sure here. They change regex to regexstr in a lot of places and it looks like some extra validation around choosing transcoding settings.
I’m not really sure how serious any of these are, or how they could be exploited however. Well aside from the local file in stream files one.
Yeah, the key seems to be in the comments from one of the changes: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/commit/0581cd661021752e5063e338c718f211c8929310#diff-bcc2125e56d5738b4778802ac650ca47719845aeee582f3b5c9b46af82ea9979R1176-R1180
It seems there was the potential risk that insufficient validation could allow reading arbitrary server files, which indeed poses a security risk.
However, my understanding is that this could be exploited only by authenticated users with permission to add new media. Not like that’s a risk to ignore, but it’s not like it could be exploited by anyone on the Internet.
However, my understanding is that this could be exploited only by authenticated users with permission to add new media. Not like that’s a risk to ignore, but it’s not like it could be exploited by anyone on the Internet.
I wonder if that’s the reason for setting the default live TV management permission to false. Since that permission might well the the route to adding your own malicious m3u link for that second change.
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Axios is a Javascript library and Jellyfin is written in C#.
True, but there is a web frontend. Possible it could be using npm and axios somewhere in there.
I still doubt it. But it could happen.
The web server is in C#. It’s open source lol, I’m looking at the code and there’s no JavaScript.
Look better https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web
That’s awkward. I didn’t know that was in a separate repo.
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Just updated, thanks for the info <3
The update rolled out perfectly for my Kubernetes setup (using the Docker image). 👍
In the raspian repos, just updated, thanks.
also in the docker repository.
Im on fedora and I have installed through dnf, no updates with the dnf update… should I wait?
I depends a bit on your threat model. If you have Jellyfin exposed to the internet I would shut it down immediately. If you are running locally and rely on it, let it run maybe? If behind a tailnet or some other VPN, I would deactivate it as well. If it is an Axios like vulnerability it may be possible your secrets are in danger, dependent on how well they are secured. Not a security expert, but I would handle this a little more conservative…
No need to shut it down if it’s not exposed to the internet. Tailnet/VPN is fine.
If it’s a supply chain compromise shutting it down wouldn’t matter. The damage is already done.
It’s on my home, which is not 24/7 open. Will see check later.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency Plex Brand of media server package RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SMB Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPN Virtual Private Network nginx Popular HTTP server
[Thread #203 for this comm, first seen 1st Apr 2026, 09:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
That changelog just screams AI lol. All the emojis
Three. Three emojis, used in headings as a bullet point.
It is perfectly plausable for someone whos job is to write technical documentation and promotional material would punch it up with a couple 'mojis.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/releases
Every single release uses the same format with the same 3 emojis. You’d know that if you’d clicked “releases” and had even a modicum of curiosity.
No worries. We’ve been communicating with pictures since ancient cave men scrawled pictographs on cave walls with a piece of burnt firewood.
It isn’t, not that I would care anyways
