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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Why VPN tunnels are safer than opening a port on my router? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi!

I often read suggestions to use something like Tailscale to create a tunnel between a home server and a VPS because it is allegedly safer than opening a port for WireGuard (WG) or Nginx on my router and connecting to my home network that way.

However, if my VPS is compromised, wouldn't the attacker still be able to access my local network? How does using an extra layer (the VPS) make it safer?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Is it for security? I think is mostly recommended because your home router is likely to have a dynamic address.

This is in regards to opening a port for WG vs a tunnel to a VPS. Of course directly exposing nginx on your router is bad.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Quite often I see replies like "don't open ports, use tailscale". Maybe they mix different reasons and solutions, confusing people like me :D

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

The really nice thing about tailscale for accessing your hosted services is absolutely nothing can connect without authentication via a professionally hosted standard authentication, and there's no public ports for script kiddies to scan for, spot and start hammering on. There's thousands of bots that do nothing but scan the internet for hosted services and then try to compromise them, so not even showing up on those scans is a good thing.

For example, I have tailscale on my Minecraft server and connect to it via tailscale when away from home. If a buddy wants to join I just send a link sharing the machine to them and they can install tailscale and connect to it normally. If for some reason buddy needs to be cut off, I can just stop sharing to that account on Tailscale and they can no longer access the machine.

The biggest challenge of tailscale is also it's biggest benefit. Nothing can connect without connecting through the tailscale client, so if my buddy can't/won't install tailscale they can't join my Minecraft server