Comment on Is webmin safe to hsve accesible over the web
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 hours agoYes, it inherently is. Authentication/encryption happens as the very first thing at the network level, before anything resembling a service becomes accessible. This is fundamentally different than for example a web interface, which needs to present “the Web page” to allow the user to log in, which might involve multiple individual parts that can already have a 0-day.
As a more direct comparison: look into historic vulnerabilities between ipsec VPN and SSL VPN. The former is the older technology, the second is more “web like”. The number of serious CVEs for the latter over just some manufacturers (Cisco, fortinet, …) in one year probably beats the number for ipsec in is entire life time.
crandall@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
Makes sense. Its unfortunate though that it presents a hurdle for end users. My users need to hit a webpage and acesss stuff, asking them to connect to a VPN client is too much.
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 1 hour ago
It’s all a matter of what you consider reasonable risk. I also run some specific services exposed where it makes sense (they are designed to do this, think things like home assistant or next cloud or jellyfin), but would never put anything that is used to do server administration public facing (Webmin, Termix, proxmox, that sort of thing). If the purpose of the tool is to perform or allow elevated actions, I run it behind a VPN (yes for me that includes ssh).
There’s also a difference between being randomly port scanned and/or probed, or being actively and personally targeted for some reason. If the second is ever a reasonable threat, that changes what is acceptable dramatically as well.
crandall@lemmy.today 1 hour ago
All good thoughts, thank you