How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Discussion of the Web Interface for Transmission, formerly known as Clutch. This applies to all version of Transmission
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FarCry
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 1:09 pm

How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by FarCry »

Good day, fellows! Sorry for stupid question - I'm a noob in networking technologies.

I have just set up access to Web Interface from the outer world (set up port 9091 forwarding on my router) to be able to run torrents on my home machine from my work computer. (So I have my torrent staff already downloaded when I come back home from work.)

So, the question is:
I wonder how safe it might be to open Web Interface to the Web? Maybe there are security threats I'm just not aware of?

For example, I see that Web Interface page opens with unprotected connection (http) instead of https. So my home username is revealed in download destnation path.

Or, for expample, Web Inteface is just not intended to be accessed from the Web, only LAN?
FarCry
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 1:09 pm

Re: How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by FarCry »

x190 wrote:You can use the whitelist, as well as a username/password.

https://trac.transmissionbt.com/wiki/EditConfigFiles

Is it good or bad? And why http-connection? Not hhtpS?
killemov
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2010 5:04 pm

Re: How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by killemov »

I would recommend not using the web interface over plain http EVER! It's quite simple to put something like lighttpd in front of it to take care of https encryption. When using Shift you can even make most content (torrents, files) directly accessible.
theroyalstudent
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:01 am

Re: How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by theroyalstudent »

killemov wrote:I would recommend not using the web interface over plain http EVER! It's quite simple to put something like lighttpd in front of it to take care of https encryption. When using Shift you can even make most content (torrents, files) directly accessible.
+1, and it's free to get a Let's Encrypt certificate, so why not use that with nginx as a reverse proxy?
FarCry
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 1:09 pm

Re: How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by FarCry »

I didn't understand anything from this article. =((( Can someone explain this in common words, plz?

I got only that opening Transmission port to outer Internet is extremely unsafe. =((
FarCry
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 1:09 pm

Re: How safe is to open access to the Web Interface from the outer world, beyond the router?

Post by FarCry »

theroyalstudent wrote:
killemov wrote:I would recommend not using the web interface over plain http EVER! It's quite simple to put something like lighttpd in front of it to take care of https encryption. When using Shift you can even make most content (torrents, files) directly accessible.
+1, and it's free to get a Let's Encrypt certificate, so why not use that with nginx as a reverse proxy?
What is all this? =))
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