So everyone is talking about cloudflare tunnels and I decided to give it a shot.
However, I find the learning curve quite hard and would really appreciate a short introduction into how they work and how do I set them up…
In my current infrastructure I am running a reverse proxy with SSL and Authentik, but nothing is exposed outside. I access my network via a VPN but would like to try out and consider CF. Might be easier for the family.
How does authentication work? Is it really a secure way to expose internal services?
I used one to reach my qbittorrent selfhost. I found a cool docker image. It bundles a openVPN connection with qbittorrent so that I don’t need my home server to be on a VPN at all times. As well as ensures traffic always goes through VPN. I was running into an issue where I could not reach from my home network. But when I used a cloudflare tunnel it somehow worked. This was all until I realized there was an environment variable of LAN I needed to set which allowed connections from my home network 😮💨
I would definitely recommend this setup for any torrenting. I’ve been using it for years with zero IP leaks. Believe me, Spectrum would let me know. They did before I had setup.
EDIT: just realized the guy deleted the docker image for that based on a false positive (that’s been a false positive for a year). I reuploaded their same image to my docker account. Still works without any leak, not sure why they took such a drastic measure.
What I’m doing is using a dedicated VPN Gateway container. The instances running delicate services have a static default route to the GW-container.
This is an extra step, but allows me add easily route other services or clients or even whole networks through my VPN without additional setup or specialized containers bundling both.
Wanna use it on the phone? Change the gateway address. Wanna use it from my Linux machine? Add a static default route. Etc…
That sounds better since it doesn’t have any kind of bundling of images. Do you have a link to anything public I can look at to try out a similar setup?
Unfortunately not at the moment, as all is kinda fiddled and setup manually, but I’m redoing my home lab in a couple of weeks. Send me a message and I’ll send you the docker image or script!
But basically I did the following:
enable ipv4 forwarding
configure and start VPN tunnel
set the default route to the tunnel
set the gw for reaching the remote vpn server to the local gw
sets routes for the local network to the local gw
If your vpn goes down, the default route shall still point to the remote gw, but as it isn’t there you also have a kill switch. Voila!
I am looking into gluetun but haven’t tried it yet.
Edit: this doesn’t protect you from someone snooping the traffic inside your local net, but protects it starting from the point where it leaves the local vpngw. The traffic is unencrypted between that and your client.
Selfhost headscale, run a reverse proxy with let’s encrypt on a VPS and Tailscale that VPS to your local server, utilizing Tailscale’s ACLs to block all ports except for your desired ones. It’s exactly what CF tunnels is doing but you have far more control over your data and security.
Lol, decided to ask chatGPT this question, turned out pretty well:
Alright, imagine you have a magic tunnel that can connect different places together. But this is not an ordinary tunnel that you can see or walk through. It’s a special tunnel that works with the internet!
You know when you want to visit a website on your tablet or computer, you type its address in a web browser, right? Well, sometimes websites need extra protection to stay safe from bad things on the internet. That’s where Cloudflare Tunnel comes in!
Cloudflare Tunnel is like a superhero that helps keep websites safe. It creates a secret passage between the website and Cloudflare’s special servers. When people try to visit the website, their requests go through this secret tunnel first.
Now, imagine there are some bad guys who want to do bad things to the website. They try to find the website, but all they see is the secret tunnel. They can’t see the website or know where it is. It’s like the website is hiding!
But good people, like you and me, can still find the website because we know the secret. We can use the magic tunnel to reach the website and see what’s there. Cloudflare Tunnel helps protect the website from the bad guys and lets the good people get through.
So, Cloudflare Tunnel is like a special secret tunnel on the internet that keeps websites safe from bad guys and helps the good people find them.
Essentially it IS a tunnel, just with cloudflare’s infrastructure in the middle handling auth and obscuring each end from the other.
Auth is handled by cloudflare. That doesn’t mean cloudflare necessarily is the auth provider, though. Not likely in selfhosted, but one could set up some other auth provider, like azure, and cloudflare could give tunnel access to authorized users who actually provided credentials via azure.
The service, port, whatever being accessed via the tunnel may also require auth, and cloudflare generally doesn’t handle that. For example, your cloudflare tunnel to your local sonarr instance requires auth at cloudflare first, to access the tunnel, then again at sonarr because your sonarr instance requires authentication.
In a docker environment, you would either tunnel to the docker host or to individual Dockers. The latter is more sensible and generally a bit more secure, if only because least access = better. There’s probably some cloudflare tunnels docker out there that does half the setup for you, then you just stick it and the Dockers you want exposed through the tunnel all on the same docker network interface (which you create), but that’s just speculation.
As far as setting tunnels up goes, the docs are really good at the step by step. Easiest way to learn it is to set up a VM similar to what you want and bang away at the steps until it does what you want. Some things are easy, like RDP. Other things are trickier.
The basics of setup are that you use the cloudflared application at both ends: one server-side to expose what you want and one client-side to access the tunnel via cloudflare.
Tailscale is the same kinda thing. I think it is way easier for a lot of people. There’s a lot less setup involved. Just install the apps and make a few choices.
For personal use, I use wireguard to access my home server. Professionally I use cloudflare tunnels for a couple of things, but mostly an enterprise vpn.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I am running Tailscale as a temporary solution to access some services, but I dislike that you have to set firewall rules basically twice (once in your local network and once in Tailscale). I suppose it would be similar for CF?
Yeah, any solution is going to require at least egress rules for its traffic. Tailscale is a bit different since part of what it’s able to do is provide access to your LAN, if desired. Cloudflare just needs two ports, but it’s only providing a tunnel from the host.
Cloudflared tunnels are great. No firewall ports to open.
I installed the Cloudflared docker, which is headless, and fed it my API key. Then Cloudflared creates a VPN between your system and theirs. Then, think of Cloudflare as the reverse proxy, you just configure it on the CF site instead of locally. No need for a reverse proxy on your side.
I’ve not done anything with auth on it as what I run I don’t mind being public. If you still want to run a local auth, you can set it to hit your local reverse proxy instead and do it that way.
The benefits are you don’t need to open firewall ports and your local IP is irrelevant so no need for dynamic DNS.
Just a side note that “not opening firewall ports” is not inherently a security benefit if you’re exposing the same service on the same port on the same host anyway via your reverse proxy setup.
If you were to measure your level of “security” on having ports open or not alone, then using Cloudflare tunnels could be considered worse, since an outbound VPN connection to Cloudflare is essentially circumventing your firewall’s protection entirely, meaning you’re effectively opening all 65,535 TCP and UDP ports instead of one, albeit only to Cloudflare.
There are benefits to using Cloudflare tunnels but “not opening firewall ports” is not one of them. And you could just as easily accomplish the same thing without Cloudflare by using a VPS and Tailscale with the selfhosted Headscale coordinator.
Meh, it’s sorta 6 of one and half-dozen of another. The benefit of not opening ports on a firewall isn’t necessarily a security one so much of a convenience one for people who don’t know how their routers work or no access to open those ports. The only security value is it prevents any exploits on your router and a port scan against your network won’t show those ports open. That makes it easier to hide the fact that your hosting something. I’d agree, it’s not a huge security vector to worry about, but can help people not see your real IP which has tangible value.
Really, your offloading security to CF and putting trust in them to do a better job than you, but as you said, in doing so they can sort of get the keys to your kingdom. I think it’s just worth it with their other tools to block bots and other common exploits that a Netgear home router isn’t looking for.
The problem with a vps and tailscale is its one more thing to manage and a vps costs money and cf is free.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
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.
Rules:
Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
I know some people dislike NetworkChuck but this video should help you get things going.
https://youtu.be/ey4u7OUAF3c
NetworkChuck does videos for beginners, but sometimes that’s just what an experienced user need ^^ thanks for sharing! Watching the video right now
I used one to reach my qbittorrent selfhost. I found a cool docker image. It bundles a openVPN connection with qbittorrent so that I don’t need my home server to be on a VPN at all times. As well as ensures traffic always goes through VPN. I was running into an issue where I could not reach from my home network. But when I used a cloudflare tunnel it somehow worked. This was all until I realized there was an environment variable of LAN I needed to set which allowed connections from my home network 😮💨
I would definitely recommend this setup for any torrenting. I’ve been using it for years with zero IP leaks. Believe me, Spectrum would let me know. They did before I had setup.
EDIT: just realized the guy deleted the docker image for that based on a false positive (that’s been a false positive for a year). I reuploaded their same image to my docker account. Still works without any leak, not sure why they took such a drastic measure.
What I’m doing is using a dedicated VPN Gateway container. The instances running delicate services have a static default route to the GW-container.
This is an extra step, but allows me add easily route other services or clients or even whole networks through my VPN without additional setup or specialized containers bundling both.
Wanna use it on the phone? Change the gateway address. Wanna use it from my Linux machine? Add a static default route. Etc…
Works flawlessly!
That sounds better since it doesn’t have any kind of bundling of images. Do you have a link to anything public I can look at to try out a similar setup?
Unfortunately not at the moment, as all is kinda fiddled and setup manually, but I’m redoing my home lab in a couple of weeks. Send me a message and I’ll send you the docker image or script!
But basically I did the following:
If your vpn goes down, the default route shall still point to the remote gw, but as it isn’t there you also have a kill switch. Voila!
I am looking into gluetun but haven’t tried it yet.
Edit: this doesn’t protect you from someone snooping the traffic inside your local net, but protects it starting from the point where it leaves the local vpngw. The traffic is unencrypted between that and your client.
I would also like to know this. Everyone talks about it but I have no idea how it’s different than anything I’m doing now. Is it like Tailscale?
One of the mysteries I am facing ^^ selfhost headscale? Tailscale? VPN? CF?
Too many options :D
Try to selfhost tailscale
You can set it up in 10 minutes.
In iOS, you can make automations to connect after launching certain apps.
In Android, you can do split tunneling.
Selfhost headscale, run a reverse proxy with let’s encrypt on a VPS and Tailscale that VPS to your local server, utilizing Tailscale’s ACLs to block all ports except for your desired ones. It’s exactly what CF tunnels is doing but you have far more control over your data and security.
Personally, I just wireguard in to my local net. No need to have CF snooping where they don’t need to.
It all depends on your use cases and what you (or your users) need to access.
One of my considerations is the privacy side… VPN or self hosted solution seems to be the waay better choice in that case.
Lol, decided to ask chatGPT this question, turned out pretty well:
Alright, imagine you have a magic tunnel that can connect different places together. But this is not an ordinary tunnel that you can see or walk through. It’s a special tunnel that works with the internet!
You know when you want to visit a website on your tablet or computer, you type its address in a web browser, right? Well, sometimes websites need extra protection to stay safe from bad things on the internet. That’s where Cloudflare Tunnel comes in!
Cloudflare Tunnel is like a superhero that helps keep websites safe. It creates a secret passage between the website and Cloudflare’s special servers. When people try to visit the website, their requests go through this secret tunnel first.
Now, imagine there are some bad guys who want to do bad things to the website. They try to find the website, but all they see is the secret tunnel. They can’t see the website or know where it is. It’s like the website is hiding!
But good people, like you and me, can still find the website because we know the secret. We can use the magic tunnel to reach the website and see what’s there. Cloudflare Tunnel helps protect the website from the bad guys and lets the good people get through.
So, Cloudflare Tunnel is like a special secret tunnel on the internet that keeps websites safe from bad guys and helps the good people find them.
I mean… it’s not wrong.
Haha! Explaining for dummies, I like it.
Essentially it IS a tunnel, just with cloudflare’s infrastructure in the middle handling auth and obscuring each end from the other.
Auth is handled by cloudflare. That doesn’t mean cloudflare necessarily is the auth provider, though. Not likely in selfhosted, but one could set up some other auth provider, like azure, and cloudflare could give tunnel access to authorized users who actually provided credentials via azure.
The service, port, whatever being accessed via the tunnel may also require auth, and cloudflare generally doesn’t handle that. For example, your cloudflare tunnel to your local sonarr instance requires auth at cloudflare first, to access the tunnel, then again at sonarr because your sonarr instance requires authentication.
In a docker environment, you would either tunnel to the docker host or to individual Dockers. The latter is more sensible and generally a bit more secure, if only because least access = better. There’s probably some cloudflare tunnels docker out there that does half the setup for you, then you just stick it and the Dockers you want exposed through the tunnel all on the same docker network interface (which you create), but that’s just speculation.
As far as setting tunnels up goes, the docs are really good at the step by step. Easiest way to learn it is to set up a VM similar to what you want and bang away at the steps until it does what you want. Some things are easy, like RDP. Other things are trickier.
The basics of setup are that you use the cloudflared application at both ends: one server-side to expose what you want and one client-side to access the tunnel via cloudflare.
Tailscale is the same kinda thing. I think it is way easier for a lot of people. There’s a lot less setup involved. Just install the apps and make a few choices.
For personal use, I use wireguard to access my home server. Professionally I use cloudflare tunnels for a couple of things, but mostly an enterprise vpn.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I am running Tailscale as a temporary solution to access some services, but I dislike that you have to set firewall rules basically twice (once in your local network and once in Tailscale). I suppose it would be similar for CF?
Yeah, any solution is going to require at least egress rules for its traffic. Tailscale is a bit different since part of what it’s able to do is provide access to your LAN, if desired. Cloudflare just needs two ports, but it’s only providing a tunnel from the host.
@operator
Cloudflared tunnels are great. No firewall ports to open.
I installed the Cloudflared docker, which is headless, and fed it my API key. Then Cloudflared creates a VPN between your system and theirs. Then, think of Cloudflare as the reverse proxy, you just configure it on the CF site instead of locally. No need for a reverse proxy on your side.
I’ve not done anything with auth on it as what I run I don’t mind being public. If you still want to run a local auth, you can set it to hit your local reverse proxy instead and do it that way.
The benefits are you don’t need to open firewall ports and your local IP is irrelevant so no need for dynamic DNS.
Just a side note that “not opening firewall ports” is not inherently a security benefit if you’re exposing the same service on the same port on the same host anyway via your reverse proxy setup.
If you were to measure your level of “security” on having ports open or not alone, then using Cloudflare tunnels could be considered worse, since an outbound VPN connection to Cloudflare is essentially circumventing your firewall’s protection entirely, meaning you’re effectively opening all 65,535 TCP and UDP ports instead of one, albeit only to Cloudflare.
There are benefits to using Cloudflare tunnels but “not opening firewall ports” is not one of them. And you could just as easily accomplish the same thing without Cloudflare by using a VPS and Tailscale with the selfhosted Headscale coordinator.
Meh, it’s sorta 6 of one and half-dozen of another. The benefit of not opening ports on a firewall isn’t necessarily a security one so much of a convenience one for people who don’t know how their routers work or no access to open those ports. The only security value is it prevents any exploits on your router and a port scan against your network won’t show those ports open. That makes it easier to hide the fact that your hosting something. I’d agree, it’s not a huge security vector to worry about, but can help people not see your real IP which has tangible value.
Really, your offloading security to CF and putting trust in them to do a better job than you, but as you said, in doing so they can sort of get the keys to your kingdom. I think it’s just worth it with their other tools to block bots and other common exploits that a Netgear home router isn’t looking for.
The problem with a vps and tailscale is its one more thing to manage and a vps costs money and cf is free.