I don't know who needs to hear this, but DO NOT EVER expose Jellyfin to the internet
Collection of potential security issues in Jellyfin · Issue #5415 · jellyfin/jellyfin
Collection of potential security issues in Jellyfin This is a non exhaustive list of potential security issues found in Jellyfin. Some of these might cause controversy. Some of these are design fla...
It's a list from 2021 and as a cybersec researcher and Jellyfin user I didn't see anything that would make me say "do not expose Jellyfin to the Internet".
That's not to say there might be something not listed, or some exploit chain using parts of this list, but at least it's not something that has been abused over the last four years if so.
The last set of comments is from 2024. These have not been addressed. The fact that it is possible to stream without auth is just bonkers.
The entirity of jellyfin security is security via obscurity which is zero security at all.
"As a cybersec researcher", the limp wristed, hand wavy approach to security should be sending up alarm bells. The fact that it doesn't, means that likely either, you don't take your research very seriously, or you aren't a "cybersecurity researcher".
"Thank you for this list. We are aware of quite a few, but for reasons of backwards compatibility they've never been fixed. We'd definitely like to but doing so in a non-disruptive way is the hard part."
Is truly one of the statements of all time.
You can't say that a solution is no security at all when it requires time and intelligence to bypass.
It is at least 0.01 security.
How is someone meant to guess what seems to be a randomly generated id? If they try to brute force it then you could probably set up something like fail2ban to block them after a few failed attempts.
I’m not saying video ids shouldn’t require authentication, they should but the risk of someone getting the video id seems fairly low.
Agreed, this is a valid list of minor concerns but this is just a fearmongering post. It’s not good that some metadata can leak but if you take normal precautions (i.e. don’t run this next to your classified information storage) it’s fine to open this so your friends can watch media.
Source: me and my Masters degree in cybersecurity (but apparently OP just learned about Kerckhoff’s principle and rainbow tables in a completely incorrect context so I know how to do my job or smth lmao)
Edit: lol don’t look at OPs post history, now I know where the fearmongering came from
Source: R1 masters professor. Literally the person you would have needed to take the class from on the topic at my institution.
This is a problem simply because most paths and names will be similar due to *arr suites and docker mounts normalizing them to a standard that jellyfin wants to see. In the context of Sony's top 1000 movies, they can pre-compile the top 100 likely paths for the file (/movies, /mnt/movies, etc) then run the 100000 hash check through scripts against your instance. How long does it take to let a crawler collect http statuses on 100000 page loads? Now put that to a bot that gets jellyfin instances from a tool like shodan and add more hashes. If you flag, now onus is on you to prove you have license for content and they would have a case that you distributing (albeit weak) since your server was open to the public. This is child's play level abuse-able. Risking that something easy like this isn't being abused by Sony and others (you know... willing to install a rootkit on your computer types...) is a very silly stance to take.
The hash that's used to represent the path isn't salted or otherwise unique.
Edit: mobile typos.
It's nice to read something sane in these threads.
but if you take normal precautions (i.e. don’t run this next to your classified information storage)
oh yeah I'm pretty sure the majority of users bought a dedicated machine for Jellyfin
Fully agreed. There's some stuff in the list that could leak server info or metadata about available content to the public, but the rest seems to require some knowledge before being able to exploit it, such as user IDs.
That doesn't mean these aren't issues, but they're not "take your jellyfin down now" type issues either.
So I have a NAS running Ubuntu I only keep my movies, my Jellyfin, and torrent software on in an isolated VLAN I stream from. I would think this would make any security issue with Jellyfin a dead end. I stream all content from Jellyfin domain I made and never use it locally. I stream off it at home from my VPN. This seems a safe way to stream where it can be used away from home unless I am missing something? Pointing out any holes in my logic is appreciated.
Yea many of the linked issues are already closed. Why is this post not down-voted like crazy?
No. None of the items are closed. Click the "closed" items. All of them are "Not planned. Duplicate, see 5415".
The same reason FUD is so popular in regular news.
I'm not sure who needs to hear this, but unless you work as a security engineer or in another security-focused tech field, you really shouldn't be exposing your homelab to the open internet anyway
Most people access their homelabs via VPN - i don't see anything here that's a problem for that use-case.
Many people host websites ;)
And I would hope those websites are extremely low-risk and not anywhere near essential infrastructure or data ;)
I need to run a VPN already. Fine for desktop, but this isn't a solution for mobile (where you can't run two VPNs simultaneously)
Huh, I can't check the link right now... But if exposing Jellyfin to the Internet is not an option, then it is not ready to be shipped as the Plex replacement I have heard a lot here and on Reddit.
The linked post is from 2021. Many of the items were already closed. This looks like fear mongering.
No. None of the items are closed. Click the "closed" items. All of them are "Not planned. Duplicate, see 5415".
Do we even know that Plex is better? It's closed source and hasn't been audited afaik
Do we even know that Plex is better? It’s closed source and hasn’t been audited afaik
Yes... because you can take the raw request your browser makes... remove your auth cookie and replay the same request and it fails.
Closed source doesn't mean that it can't be tested for problems. Just means that you can't go to the code to understand why it's a problem. You can still see that the problem exists (or doesn't in this case).
Edit: I haven't tested every api endpoint myself... but for video files it doesn't work. It's not vulnerable to the same thing that JF is in that specific case.
It is if you have compared them together.
I haven't recently thought and I am a lifetime Plex pass user (we will see what lifetime truly means sooner or later) and I have still been unaffected by most of the changes Plex has done (watch together is the 1st valuable feature that I have lost), so if you can't expose Jellyfin then it is not better than Plex for me.
Put the instance behind another authentication point like a VPN or reverse proxy with SSO. That will prevent the wider Internet from accessing it without legitimate users being cut off. You should be doing this with any server you operate (like Plex), but definitely one that may have legal implications.
aaaand now you smart tv can't connect. none of them. the clients dont even support http basic auth creds put into the URL for some crazy reason.
for advanced HTTP-level authentication you would need to run a reverse proxy on the TV's network that would add the authentication info. for the VPN idea you would need to tunnel the TV's network's internet connection at the router. or set up a gateway address in the TVs network settings that would do that. or use a reverse proxy here too so that it repeats the request to the real server.
but honestly, this is the real and only secure way anyway. I wouldn't be comfortable to expose jellyfin even if the devs are real experts. I mean vulns get discovered, in dotnet, jellyfin dependencies, linux filesystem, and reverse proxy, and honestly who has time to always tightly keep up to date with all that.
that's not to discount the seriousness of the issue though, it's a real shame that jellyfin is so much against security
I am sorry, I don't think I follow, I am CGNATED anyway, so I need to use VPNs to access my server (if IPv6 is not available, for IPv4 I am experimenting with Tailscale funnels as of now).
Agreed. I'm a bit disappointed that it's being touted as such. If you need a local LAN option, use VLC Player.
For those unaware, it's a good idea to be using a service like tailscale (self hosted=headscale if you don't want to make your login credentials tied to apple, google, or Microsoft). It's a VPN but a lot simpler to use.
I dont know what that means.
Can I use that in addition to another VPN on mobile?
Afaik android doesn't allow two VPNs at the same time. If you have a VPN back to your home already, like via your router, you don't need tailscale although I'd argue it's still better.
If you mean a VPN like mullvad, afaik you can't mullvad and tailscale at the same time. I may be wrong but I gave up on global VPNs a while ago.
I remember when they were arguing that you don't need a VPN or proxy basic authentication in front of it because their team knows how to write secure code...
There's a bug (closed as won't fix) where proxy basic authentication breaks jellyfin. You can't use it.
Many of these have already been fixed FWIW, it's not a collection of open issues. Nevermind, they have only been closed, not fixed. Yikes.
No. None of the items are closed. Click the "closed" items. All of them are "Not planned. Duplicate, see 5415".
Edit: The biggest issue of unauthenticated streaming of content... https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/13777
Last opened last week. closed as duplicate. it's unaddressed completely.
If my server is already open to everyone, what kind of potential attacks do i need to be worried a about? I dont keep personal files on my streaming server, its just videos, music and isos/roms. I dont restrict sign ups, so the idea of an unauthorized user doing something like download a video is a non issue for me really.
I do see where there could be problems for folks running jfin on the same server they keep private photos or for people who charge users for acess, but thats not me.
Am i missing something or is the main result of most of these that a "malicious" actor could dowload files jellyfin has access to without authentication?
With unrestricted signups, they can obtain their own account easily. With their own account they can enumerate all your other users.
If they have their own account they can just find your instance, make a login, collect all the proof they need that you're hosting content you don't own (illegally own) then serve you a court summons and ruin your life.
I wouldn't worry about the vulnerability in the link since your already wide open. But I wouldn't leave Jellyfin wide open either. Movie and TV studios are quite litigious.
I hope you're at least gatekeeping behind a vpn or something.
Edit: typo
Well it's hosted in The Netherlands and I did take some steps to protect my own identity in regards to registration info, but if the studios did take an interest i'd probably have some fun with it by decaliring bankrupcy and dragging out the appeals.
I guess the worst thing is that your server starts attacking the US military servers because you've become part of a botnet.
That happened to my friend one time when I installed Linux on his computer. He made the username and password the same 4-character word. Got a letter from the DoD.
I dont think they would be so forgiving these days. Especially if you're brown.
Can someone ELI5 this for me? I have a jellyfin docker stack set up through dockstarter and managed through portainer. I also own a domain that uses cloudflare to access my Jellyfin server. Since everything is set up through docker, the containers volumes are globally set to only have access to my media storage. Assuming that my setup is insecure, wouldn't that just mean that "hackers" would only be able to stream free media from my server?
If you use normalized paths/file names (through *Arr stacks or docker mounts or otherwise common tools), then the hash that jellyfin sets up when it imports that media can be guessable. If someone was to go and precompile a list of hashes for content that they're looking for at common paths that people store their files at, they can ask your server for those hashes, and if their list is sufficiently large enough to include the path that you used, your jellyfin instance WILL RESPOND WITHOUT AUTHENTICATION.
I've been using this example because it shows how silly this is.
In the context of Sony’s top 1000 movies, they can pre-compile the top 100 likely paths for the file (/movies, /mnt/movies, etc) then run the 100000 hash check through scripts against your instance. How long does it take to let a crawler collect http statuses on 100000 page loads? Now put that to a bot that gets jellyfin instances from a tool like shodan and add more hashes. If you flag, now onus is on you to prove you have license for content and they would have a case that you distributing (albeit weak) since your server was open to the public. This is child’s play level abuse-able. Risking that something easy like this isn’t being abused by Sony and others (you know… willing to install a rootkit on your computer types…) is a very silly stance to take.
The answer to some of this is that you can just hide the content on a more complicated and less likely to guess path. That will sufficiently change the MD5 hashes enough that you should be more or less unguessable... Instead of using /mnt/media/movies (or /media/movies, or /movies/, etc...) make the path /mnt/k9RKiQvUwLVCjSqhb2gWTwstgKuDJx59S3J35eFzW2dgSSp84EG7PPAhf2MwCySt/media/movies.
The real answer should be that Jellyfin requires that all those endpoint need authorization/login. But their answer is "We don't want to break backwards compatibility. So we won't." Which is a bit silly of an answer. Those who use the default installation and organize their content with *arr suites (or with default docker settings/guide settings), are most likely to have guessable MD5 hashes and are most at risk.
Edit: Oh and the other point... if the "response" against this is "well that would take too long, or be too hard. You'd need a lot of money to find all these instances and test them...". We're talking about the likes of Sony... The ones that installed rootkits on peoples computers for daring to put a CD into a CD-ROM drive. They're litigious folk, and will bury you in paper and sue you to oblivion. It's not a lot of machine time to test a single server. Setting up a couple dozen scanners and just letting it go to find content on it's own isn't that bad from a computational standpoint.
And another argument I've seen here... "Well if they hack your server then that's illegal too, can't make a lawsuit out of that"... Except this is normal web operations. Bots and site scanners aren't illegal. Nor do they break any authentication mechanism (which is illegal) to do this. Specifically putting this behind authentication would make you correct. But Jellyfin didn't do that (yet). So guess what. It's perfectly possible for them to setup a few scanners across a few servers and do this 100% legally.
I think I understand now. Thank you! I will be changing my paths then. It's kind of a moot point since I'll change my paths anyway, but for the sake of my own curiosity, i have a follow up question. Feel free to disregard it if you don't feel like taking the time to answer.
Hypothetically, my docker setup only allows jellyfin to see /mnt/user as /storage. So jellyfin would report the path to Morbius as being:
/storage/hdd1/media/movies/Morbius_all_morbed_up.mkv
when in all actuality it would be:
/mnt/user/hdd1/media/movies/Morbius_all_morbed_up.mkv
My intuition tells me that the file path that jellyfin "sees" would be the security risk. So "/storage/hdd1/...." Is that correct?
Or you become part of a bonnet and attack your own government's military. Then you get some very angry knocks on your door and a black back over your face.
And, if you're brown, probably some electrodes on your genitals until you sign a written confession.
PluginsController only requires user privileges for potentially sensitive actions
- Includes, but is not limited to: Listing all plugins on the server without being admin, changing plugin settings, listing plugin settings without being admin. This includes the possibility of retrieving LDAP access credentials without admin privileges.
Outch
Who has the technical wherewithal to run Jellyfin but leaves access on the open web? I get that sharing is part of the point, but no one's putting their media collection on an open FTP server.
The level of convenience people expect without consequences is astounding. Going to be away for home for a few days? Load stuff onto an external SSD or SD card. Phoning home remotely makes no sense.
They jacked their prices, or are about to anyway. If you don't have a lifetime Plex pass then Plex might not be a viable option. My seedbox provider has been pushing people to Jellyfin for anyone without a Plex pass.
thanks but no. I like my privacy more
Doesn't have a sync play feature like Jellyfin does
Friends, family using Jellyfin is the reason many have it directly available (and not behind VPN for example).
I get that sharing is part of the point, but no one's putting their media collection on an open FTP server.
You would be very wrong about that. You can even search open FTP servers using Google
OK. I'll revise. No one with any sense is doing this. "Hi, RIAA and MPAA, come after me" is an asinine approach. I realize we have at least one generation unfamiliar with Napster, KaZaa and LimeWire, which replaced ratio FTP servers (which in turn replaced F-Servs in IRC). This is terrible online hygiene. You don't leave your media out there for all to see. At least password protect access before linking to your friends.
The typical guides for installing Jellyfin and friends, stop at the point where you can access the service, expecting you to secure it further.
Turns out, the default configuration for many (most) routers, is to allow external access to anything a local service will request it to allow, expecting you to secure it further.
Leaving it like that, is an explosive combo, which many users never intended to set up, but have nonetheless.
My Jellyfin server is behind Cloudflare with IP outside of my country banned.
I got Crowdsec set up on Cloudflare, Traefik and Debian directly.
I got Jellyfin up in a docker container behind Traefik, my router opens only 80 and 443 ports and direct them to Traefik.
Jellyfin has only access to my media files which are just downloaded movies and shows hardlinked by Sonarr/Radarr from my download folder.
It is publicly exposed to be able to watch it from anywhere, and share it to family and friends.
So what? They might access the movies, even delete them, I don't care, I'll just hardlink them back or re-download them. What harm can they do that would justify locking everything down?
So what? They might access the movies, even delete them, I don’t care, I’ll just hardlink them back or re-download them. What harm can they do that would justify locking everything down?
Well... if "they" happen to be the rights holders or lawyers of the rights holders and they happen to enumerate their content on your system because they can guess common linux paths and likely names that their movie/show/music would appear as in your system, you're going to care real quick when the lawsuit comes.
I'm not smart, can you tell me if having it behind a reverse proxy with certs and everything fixes any of these flaws?
Many of the issues are related to unauthenticated requests. Even though your reverse proxy provides SSL, Jellyfin still won’t know the difference between you and a random internet user. So, no, your setup doesn’t mitigate the security risks much at all.
Not really, no. These are application flaws. Caddy will happily do its job and just let bad actors abuse them. (Unless you mean mTLS certs, then Caddy would only respond to those having a client certificate, which hopefully reduces the number of bad actors to your users😉)
@walden @ScarylePoo Only if the reverse proxy has its own login on top of Jellyfin's, and even that only mitigates some of them.
I'm also an absolute dumbfuck. And I can confidently tell you, as a matter of fact, that I don't know.
I'm running SWAG reverse proxy, my DNS is not tunneled, I share my Jellyfin with others outside my network.
My primary concern is my server gets hacked, or I get charged with distributing 'public domain movies'
Hacking, even on an insecure system, would be illegal. Any copyright troll trying to sue a single user for having a private jellyfin instance which they hacked to find out about would probably have a hard time actually making a case.
"Yeah, this one guy was distributing films to himself and a few friends. I know because I hacked him" doesn't seem like a good case.
Not unless the reverse proxy adds some layer of authentication as well. Something like HTTP basic auth, or mTLS (AKA 2-way TLS AKA client certificates)
For nginx: https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/security-controls/configuring-http-basic-authentication/
so if I add a user ”john” with password “mypassword” to video.example.com, you can try adding the login as: “https://john:mypassword@video.example.xn--com-9o0a/
Most HTTP clients (e.g. browsers) support adding login like that. I don’t know what other jellyfin clients do that.
The other option is to set up a VPN (I recommend wireguard)
Not unless the reverse proxy adds some layer of authentication as well.
This is correct. However I'd want to add, that this will break EVERY app-based access of jellyfin which defeats the purpose for a lot of people. Adding auth in front of jellyfin will work and allow you to use the web client only.
You kind of touched on it... I wanted to make it clear.
VPN would be a better more interoperable answer for most cases, you'll still be stuck on devices like WebOS on LG tvs, or roku devices, or others that don't have the ability to install vpn clients.
You can't do that with jellyfin.
Basic auth doesn't work with jellyfin. Its a bug. Enable it on your reverse proxy, and jellyfin breaks. Devs closed it as wontfix
short answer: no, not really
long answer, here's an analogy that might help:
you go to https://yourbank.com/ and log in with your username and password. you click the button to go to Online Bill Pay, and tell it to send ACME Plumbing $150 because they just fixed a leak under your sink.
when you press "Send", your browser does something like send a POST request to https://yourbank.com/send-bill-payment with a JSON blob like {"account_id": 1234567890, "recipient": "ACME Plumbing", "amount": 150.0} (this is heavily oversimplified, no actual online bank would work like this, but it's close enough for the analogy)
and all that happens over TLS. which means it's "secure". but security is not an absolute, things can only be secure with a particular threat model in mind. in the case of TLS, it means that if you were doing this at a coffee shop with an open wifi connection, no one else on the coffeeshop's wifi would be able to eavesdrop and learn your password.
(if your threat model is instead "someone at the coffeeshop looking over your shoulder while you type in your password", no amount of TLS will save you from that)
but with the type of vulnerability Jellyfin has, someone else can simply send their own POST request to https://yourbank.com/send-bill-payment with {"account_id": 1234567890, "recipient": "Bob's Shady Plumbing", "amount": 10000.0}. and your bank account will process that as you sending $10k to Bob's Shady Plumbing.
that request is also over TLS, but that doesn't matter, because that's security for a different level of the stack. the vulnerability is that you are logged in as account 1234567890, so you should be allowed to send those bill payment requests. random people who aren't logged in as you should not be able to send bill payments on behalf of account 1234567890.
@ScarylePoo I wouldn't say never, but in most cases, you're best served by sticking it behind wireguard- but this is also true of any service or tool you don't intend to make available to the greater internet
Use a VPN
Honestly, is the problem that they need extra hands to fix these issues?
Thank you for this list. We are aware of quite a few, but for reasons of backwards compatibility they've never been fixed. We'd definitely like to but doing so in a non-disruptive way is the hard part.
While I'm sure that some of the answer is in not having dev time to fix it... Their response makes it seem like they're not fully interested in fixing it for other reasons... In the case of this response, "Backwards compatibility".
Thats sad honestly, this is where open source excells, and refusing to fix an issue without a plan to address it as a tech debt is just a bad solution
Yes. You shouldn't expose anything to the internet unless you 100% know what you are doing.
So what's the alternative? VPNs are unreliable
wireguard has been going fine here for 5+ years. only problems were when that garbage raspberry crashed as it always does (but that's an issue with the hardware) and when the IP changes, but that's mitigated by dynamic DNS
I think you can IP whitelist who can access it no? That should solve any problems
There is zero (0) chance of an attacker to know and then spoof address of your friend unless you have even bigger problems. Good filter should simply not respond to any packets making very existence of exploitable site undetectable.
Does your friend have a static IP? Unlikely considering that you have to pay extra for a static IP.
We are lucky, we get two free. Technically they aren't true static, its tied to MAC of your modem, or your router(s) -- with ISP modem in bridge mode. You can pay for true static, but I have probably had the same IP for 5 years, and same with the modem/routerbeforre this one.