• CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 hours ago

      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

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        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.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 hours ago

        They’ve stated that they have no intention of ever fixing some of the biggest “anyone can access your media without a login” vulnerabilities, because it would require completely divesting from the Kodi branch that they initially used to start the entire project. And they never plan on rebuilding that from scratch, so those vulnerabilities will never be fixed.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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        14 hours ago

        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.

        • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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          13 hours ago

          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.

          • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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            7 hours ago

            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.

      • AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip
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        22 hours ago

        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.

      • IratePirate@feddit.org
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        22 hours ago

        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.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        It never made sense why you shouldn’t expose jellyfin to the internet?

        I mean I think your link tells the story right?

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          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.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            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.

            • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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              6 hours ago

              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.

          • Hammersamatom@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            17 hours ago

            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

            • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              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.

          • sanzky@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            and then you are giving access to your lan to people whose computer you don’t control and might be full of malware.

            • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              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.

              • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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                6 hours ago

                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.

          • Hammersamatom@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            18 hours ago

            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

            • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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              6 hours ago

              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.

            • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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              6 hours ago

              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.

    • Damarus@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

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

          • ramble81@lemmy.zip
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            23 hours ago

            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

            • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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              14 hours ago

              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.

              • ramble81@lemmy.zip
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                14 hours 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.

            • faercol@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              22 hours 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.

        • tiz@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          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.

          • radar@programming.dev
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            1 day ago

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

            • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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              5 hours ago

              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

            • whimsy@lemmy.zip
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              18 hours ago

              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?

              • radar@programming.dev
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                18 hours ago

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

          • r00ty@kbin.life
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            1 day ago

            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.

          • ohshit604@sh.itjust.works
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            23 hours ago

            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.

      • ugo@feddit.it
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        21 hours ago

        No need to expose jellyfin to the internet if you selectively allow peers on your lan via wireguard.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          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.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours 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

        • keyez@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

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

          • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            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…

            • Dultas@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              Wireguard and possibly openvpn work on Android TVs. I set it up for my mom. Not sure about other OSs.

          • ugo@feddit.it
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            18 hours ago

            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.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours ago

            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

              • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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                1 hour ago

                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.

          • ugo@feddit.it
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            20 hours ago

            Fair, you do you, I get a lot of value out of it instead.

            • Damarus@feddit.org
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              20 hours ago

              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.

    • mriormro@lemmy.zip
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      12 hours ago

      Don’t ever shit in your own house, either.

      Just in case they’re watching.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      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.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        to be fair, Jellyfin had multiple unauthenticated vulnerabilities in the past so it makes sense to talk about it

        • antrosapien@lemmy.ml
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          23 hours ago

          I have been planning to check out Netbird for couple of days. Is it a good alternative for headscale and pangolin?

          • pfr@piefed.social
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            15 hours ago

            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.

            • antrosapien@lemmy.ml
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              14 hours ago

              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

    • Lemmchen@feddit.org
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      23 hours ago

      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.

      • esc@piefed.social
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        23 hours ago

        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.

        • Lemmchen@feddit.org
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          20 hours ago

          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

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours ago

            idk man, I wont keep my front gate unlocked just so my friends can come in without keys. either they accept having to carry an additional key, or they won’t have access without me, but I’m not going to compromise on reasonable security. oh the burden I know.

            I’ll help them set it up if they want it, they are not on their own. but zero effort won’t work.

          • esc@piefed.social
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            19 hours ago

            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. 😔

          • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            Idk man, unconditional sharing feels pretty good

            Pass. Users cause complexities. Complexities cause issues.

            • BladeFederation@piefed.social
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              15 hours ago

              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.

              • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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                14 hours ago

                The difference being, I can control computers, laptops, servers, etc. I cannot control users.

        • IratePirate@feddit.org
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          23 hours ago

          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.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        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.

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            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.

    • AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      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.

        • AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works
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          17 hours ago

          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.

        • bonenode@piefed.social
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          23 hours ago

          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.

          • traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            22 hours ago

            Tailscale is a super easy vpn that gives you access to your home network from anywhere. And it’s free.

          • esc@piefed.social
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            23 hours ago

            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.

        • Auli@lemmy.ca
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          24 hours ago

          It kind of does. Whatever and yes I’m aware of the list people keep posting and I’ve looked at it.