Hi folks. So, I know due to a myriad of reasons I should not allow Jellyfin access to the open internet. However, in trying to switch family over from Plex, I’ll need something that “just works”.
How are people solving this problem? I’ve thought about a few solutions, like whitelisting ips (which can change of course), or setting up VPN or tail scale (but then that is more work than they will be willing to do on their side). I can even add some level of auth into my reverse proxy, but that would break Jellyfin clients.
Wondering what others have thought about for this problem
I’m so tired of seeing this overblown reaction to ancient non-news.
Yes, there are some minor vulnerabilities in Jellyfin; but they really really aren’t concerning.
Unauthenticated, a random person could potentially (with some prior knowledge of this specific issue, and some significant effort randomly generating media UUIDS to tryout) retrieve/playback some media unauthorized. THATS IT. That’s the ONLY real concern. And it’s one you could mitigate with a fail2ban filter if you were that worried about it.
The other ‘issues’ here, are the potential for your already authenticated users to attack each others settings. Who do you share your server with that you’re concerned about them attacking each other???
Put this to bed and stop fussing over it. It’s genuinely not worth your time or attention. Exposing Jellyfin to the net is fine.
Dev comment on the situation: (4 days ago) https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415#issuecomment-2825240290
You could probably set up a cloudflare tunnel. I forget what they call it. I think technically sending video through it is against their TOS but if just a few friends and family are using it I doubt you will hit their naughty list.
I’ve heard mixed responses about how sensitive they are about routing video through their service. I’ve heard some people are just fine running jellyfin/Plex while others get shut down from routing a security system through it.
I’ve used it about 2 years now. I have both Jellyfin and even had Invidious for a while. I don’t even know it was against any terms until right now.
I’ve been making people use VPN, but that’s been a huge barrier to entry. I’m in the process of switching to IP allow list in traefik.
Unethical life pro tip, but I use the free tier of Cloudflare tunnels and Cloudflare access to gate access to my jellyfin instance. This is technically against their TOS but I don’t cache anything and my bandwidth usage is low so it’s probably not too noticeable. I’ll update this post if I get banned at some point 🤡
I use a reverse proxy via NGINX Proxy Manager to expose to the web but allow easy access for my users. I pay $10 a year for a domain name to make access easier.
You should maybe reconsider this for security reasons. You should implement a Whitelist or a VPN. Jellyfin is notoriously insecure software, check here:
Reading over that list, I don’t really see anything that isn’t “maybe gets read privileges for non-critical data”. Hardly useful enough to be worth attempting access to a single personal Jellyfin server.
I’d be mildly surprised if anyone has ever bothered.
You do you, but in my view the effort outweighs the benefits.
Sure, and its your own choice - But you should still be aware of what could/can happen, so that you can make this decisions informed. Maybe I worded it a bit too harshly, i’m sorry English is not my first language.
Thanks. I’ve heard about these issues before and I am not really concerned.
To OP’s point, I want something that just works for my users, and I’m not really concerned about those risks.
Just please implement a VPN or Whitelist, do not just open a port and go
Yes that is the GitHub issue I was referring to
Netbird/Tailscale
You also could use Wireguard as it is a p2p protocol by default.
If you have IPv6 access you could put in on a IPv6 address
AppleTV + Tailscale in and it’s been a flawless experience.
How do you do a tailscale with apple tv?
You can install it right on the TV, they have a first party app.
Right the jellyfin side, but how do you get it to go through tailscale? I’m not as familiar with tailscale, I only use openvpn
tvOS supports VPN connections directly on the Apple TV. Haven’t tried it myself but I assume you just download the Tailscale app, set it up, and then it should just work.
Thanks! Interesting they support them now!
Tailscale has an AppleTV app, just download it and add it to your talent.
Ohhh okay! Interesting, and thank you!
Hang on, why not open the port to jellyfin to the internet?
I have a lifetime Plex pass so its not urgent but I have a containers running emby and jellyfin to check them out. When I decide which one I planned to open it up and give people logins.
That wouldn’t even be using TLS
Bad idea
See this issue on their github repo: here
Basically from what I understand there’s loads of unauthenticated api calls, so someone can very easily exploit that.
If they just supported mTLS in their clients it wouldn’t be an issue but oh well :(
The main unauthenticated action is video streaming, but an attacker would need to guess the correct id by chance.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415#issuecomment-2825240290
It’s not chance if the I’d is based on the path to your media. There’s but that much variation in the path to a certain movie and its trivial to build a rainbow table to try them out. This way unauthenticated users can not only stream from your server but effectively map your library
You can share jellyfin over the net.
The security issues that tend to be quoted are less important than some people claim them to be.
For instance the unauthorized streaming bug, often quoted as one of the worst jellyfin security issues, in order to work the attacker need to know the exact id of the item they want to stream, which is virtually impossible unless they are or have been an authorized client at some point.
Just set it up with the typical bruteforce protections abd you’ll be fine.
This. Just setup fail2ban or similar in front of Jellyfin and you’ll be fine.
It’s not impossible, Far from it. The ids are not random uuids but hashes derived from the path. Since most people have a similar setup to organize their media, this gets trivial very fast
If you’re worried about it, make sure to not use a default path. Then legit clients are fine but these theoretical attackers get stymied.
What? Why would I have to make my library harder to manage just because Jellyfin devs can’t get their act together? They should just start a api/v2 and secure it properly while allowing to disable the old one
I’m with you that you shouldn’t have to, but putting your media directory one level up in a randomly generated directory name isn’t too bad. ~/[random uuid]/media/… may not be a terrible idea in any case.
Ah, so you’re the kind who loves bitching about things online, but won’t lift a finger to defend themself, gotcha.
What I mentioned prior doesn’t change anything about library management in the slightest, you just wanted an excuse.
No, I’m the kind who thinks security by obscurity is bullshit. But you do you
Fine is a relative term
You probably are fine but the company who is getting attacked by your compromised machine isn’t
I don’t think jellyfin vulnerabilities could lead to a zombified machine. At least I’ve not read about something like that happening.
Most Jellyfin issues I known are related to unauthorized API calls of the backend.
I think it is a matter of time honestly.
Jellyfin has grown enough in popularity that it is likely a target for a state actor looking to create some minions. Just because there isn’t any known remote code execution vulnerabilities doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one in the future.
Maybe I’m being paranoid but it seems way safer to just not expose Jellyfin.
Any software can have zero-day exploits for that matter.
Oof, a lot of vitriol in this thread.
In the end, security is less about tooling and config, and more about understanding the risks and acting accordingly.
I expose jellyfin to the internet, but only to a specific public IP. That reduced my risk considerably.
When I did this I set up a VPN on my network and forced anyone that wanted to use it to get on my network.
How does that work with Roku/smart TVs?
Probably doesn’t. Might need to use the router to get the whole network on th vpn
They could route it though a different device
I have my smart TV access it over my local network. If you’re using a friend’s instance, you could set up a WiFi SSID that tunnels everything over your VPN.
If that’s onerous, you can make it publicly accessible, but only for whitelisted client IPs.
Yeah I want to completely switch off of Plex but neither is a good solution for my non tech family members. Mother in law is in a retirement center where they use wifi provided for the condos so I can’t access her router. And I would expect her ip to occasionally change on reboots etc. I might try IP ranges or narrow geo blocking.
Yeah, an IP range totally works. Figure out the subnet info and add that to a whitelist. It’s a pain, but it should keep the script kiddies at bay.
You configure the VPN in the router the roku connects through.
I have it as an unprivileged container behind a reverse proxy and HTTPS/HSTS. I know it’s not perfect but I keep backups of important shit and monitor things regularly.
I agree that Jellyfin needs to improve its API security, though. Their excuse that “it would break clients on old APIs” is moot when C# comes with API versioning features out of the box.
Making a note so I can find this again - also I have been loving JellyFin over Plex.
Jellyfin over Plex?
Yup, I like jelly more - not that I have one running over the other lol
I thought there was some way to use Jelly on the backend with a Plex client!
Reverse proxy with CrowdSec, which has setups specifically for Jellyfin. Docker for everything.
Now that’s interesting, what is the purpose of the reverse proxy, don’t you still need something exposed then?
The reverse proxy is the part that’s exposed. CrowdSec watches the logs for intrusion attempts like fail2ban would.
A reverse proxy saves you from having to expose your services directly and acts as a go-between.
Internet <--> Reverse Proxy <--> ServiceRight, but what exactly does the reverse proxy do to stop intrusion?
Crowdsec is what stops the intrusion.
Crowdsec won’t protect against a security vulnerability
It will if it detects the requests and blocks them
Think of it as more modular.
I personally used Traefik, but only because I’m a masochist and it would be useful to know in IT workplace.
Traefik + CrowdSec + CowdSec Traefik Bouncer.
Traefik handles the traffic, and said traffic has to get a green light from CrowdSec + Bouncer before it can go anywhere.
The concept of CrowdSec is honestly super awesome.
Is Taefik really that good? It seems crazy complex
It’s designed to scale. Plus it’s nifty to be able to add ~3 tags to a docker container and then it’s instantly online and ready to be used.
