🚀 Jellyfin Server 10.11.7
We are pleased to announce the latest stable release of Jellyfin, version 10.11.7! This minor release brings several bugfixes to improve your Jellyfin experience. As alway...
That’s never made sense to me; why build an authn frontend instead of just clicking your user if the security is just an illusion anyways. “Use a VPN” is fine for a mainframe, but an active project in 2026 should aspire to be better.
I mean I’m sure they’d like to just ship safe code in the first place. But if that’s not their expertise and they demonstrate that repeatedly, we gotta take steps ourselves. Secure is obviously best, but I’d rather have insecure Jellyfin behind a VPN than no Jellyfin at all.
Agreed, was more so referring to others. I apologize if it seemed like I was referring to myself
I’m already well and truly deep into this, myself. Two Proxmox nodes running the *Arr stack and Jellyfin in LXC containers. Bare metal TrueNAS, with scheduled LTO backups every two weeks. A few other bits and bobs, like some game servers and home automation for family.
Especially for things like game servers, you could use tailscale serve (https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-serve) to allow temporary access, via a generated URL using your tailscale domain, to the server’s port.
It’s a bit of learning (like all of these other things) but it’s a very powerful tool.
I do agree with the general point that Jellyfin shouldn’t require a VPN.
You only have to give them access to a specific port on a specific machine, not your entire LAN.
My VPN has a ‘media’ usergroup who can only access the, read-only, NFS exports of my media library.
If you’re just installing Wireguard and enabling IP forwarding, yeah it would not be secure. But using a mesh VPN, like Tailscale/Headscale, gives you A LOT more tools to control access.
Oh absolutely, difference being that you only need to expose the service once, versus helping however many people set up VPNs to access the service on your LAN
I know way too many people who won’t remember to toggle it on, or just won’t deal with it
It’s not this or that. Security comes in layers. So while I would assume that the Jellyfin developers do their best to secure their application, I acknowledge the fact that bugs do exist and that Jellyfin is developed in and for hobbyist contexts, and thus not scrutinised and pentested for vulnerabilities in the way software meant for professional environments would be. Therefore I’ll add an extra layer of security by putting it behind a VPN that only whitelisted clients can access. If a vulnerability is detected, I can be sure it hasn’t already been exploited to compromise my server because we’re all “among friends” there.
That’s why you do it at your router or gateway and then set a route for the Jellyfin server through the VPN adapter. That way any device on your network will flow through the tunnel to the Jellyfin server including TVs
What? No, you can do a tiny reverse proxy/vpn on a stick with something like a RPi. Configure it and give it to them. Then they point their Jellyfin client on their device to the IP of the RPi instance on their network and that creates the tunnel back to your VPN endpoint and server.
And for VPNs at a router level you can inject routes and leave th default route going out through your ISP, you don’t need to, nor want to, have all traffic going through it.
Which again implies that you have a router that allows you to do so. It’s not always the case. For tech enthusiast people that’s the case. But not for everyone.
I tried to do the same thing at first, but it was a pain, there were tons of issues.
Reverse proxy will let anyone connect to it. VPN, you can create keys/logins for your intended users only. Having said that, from what I could see, nothing in the security fixes were to do with authentication. I think (just from a cursory look), they could only be exploited, if at all from an authenticated user session.
But personally, something like jellyfin where the number of people I want to be able to access it is very limited, stays behind a VPN. Better to limit your potential attack surface as much as you can.
Pangolin is based off of Traefik if I’m not mistaken, should be able to use Traefiks IP-Allowlist middleware to blacklist all IP addresses and only whitelisting the known few.
or use the ldap auth plugin with your source of truth, put it behind a reverse proxy, protect it with fail2ban and anubis. there are ways of exposing it safely.
Do not rely on an OIDC/LDAP provider with Jellyfin, you cannot run these in front of your proxy otherwise Jellyfin applications will not be able to communicate with the server.
Blacklist all IP address and whitelist the known few, no need for Fail2Ban or a WAF.
you totally can use ldap or oidc it just requires more setup. you just ensure jellyfin and your source of truth talk on their own subnet, docker can manage it all for you. ldap can be setup to be ldaps with ssl and never even leave the docker subnet anyways.
and yes I suppose you could rely on whitelists, but you’d have to manually add to the whitelist for every user, and god forbid if someone is traveling.
The thing is, if you have non-technical users, you have to set up the VPN connection on the client site yourself, maybe on multiple machines and more than once, if they decide to upgrade or even just reset their devices.
The problem here - it’s not me who requires access to my library, if someone isn’t willing or able to do it, I’m sorry but that’s just how it is. People should stop infantilize non-technical people, absolute majority of them is capable of navigating our world without much problems and I’m willing to help them if help is asked.
If my 60 y.o. mother with close to zero technical skills can do it with limited help (due to distance and other constraints) I’m pretty sure that majority of people with sound mind can.
Or you can not be arrogant towards your friends and family who have probably helped you on lots of occasions and will probably keep being there for you in the future.
Idk man, unconditional sharing feels pretty good, tbh. Making them jump through hoops isn’t really my jam. To me this kinda all plays into making a stronger bond with people that are close to me, so maybe we have different reasons for why we are sharing our stuff.
I’m not arrogant, just don’t assume that people are dumb and inept. If they can’t or don’t want to give a bit of time to setup it, well how can someone be forced to use free service that causes momentarily inconvenience once to use. 😔
Having a program causes issues. Connecting it to the internet causes issues. Having a computer causes issues. Better turn your laptop off and throw it on the garbage.
So use a reverse proxy with authentiacation before access to Jellyfin is allowed. I use Caddy forward_auth with Authelia for this. Unless you want to use the apps, this works great.
No. As I said, apps don’t work. I cobbled together an API key service in Rust but it is a bit too messy and single purpose for me to open source it right now. Maybe one day.
It depends if you’re using Pangolin for private access or public exposure.
NetBird is a clean replacement for headscale/tailscale, but if your using pangolin specifically for its public tunnel feature then you’d need to keep pangolin.
The solution is mentioned already - use vpn, it will solve 90% of the problems that you can encounter. Also you can serve multiple other services this way without exposing them.
Don’t expose jellyfin to the internet is a golden rule.
That’s never made sense to me; why build an authn frontend instead of just clicking your user if the security is just an illusion anyways. “Use a VPN” is fine for a mainframe, but an active project in 2026 should aspire to be better.
I mean I’m sure they’d like to just ship safe code in the first place. But if that’s not their expertise and they demonstrate that repeatedly, we gotta take steps ourselves. Secure is obviously best, but I’d rather have insecure Jellyfin behind a VPN than no Jellyfin at all.
Unfortunately, not everyone is tech-literate enough nowadays to understand how a VPN works, nor do they want to
Yes, not everyone. My grandmother would struggle setting up a VPN, for example.
However, a community member of the selfhosted community is perfectly capable of reading a manual and learning the software.
That’s how you become tech literate in the first place, and you’re already on that path if you’re commenting/reading here.
Agreed, was more so referring to others. I apologize if it seemed like I was referring to myself
I’m already well and truly deep into this, myself. Two Proxmox nodes running the *Arr stack and Jellyfin in LXC containers. Bare metal TrueNAS, with scheduled LTO backups every two weeks. A few other bits and bobs, like some game servers and home automation for family.
Look at Tailscale (or self-host headscale)
Especially for things like game servers, you could use
tailscale serve(https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-serve) to allow temporary access, via a generated URL using your tailscale domain, to the server’s port.It’s a bit of learning (like all of these other things) but it’s a very powerful tool.
I do agree with the general point that Jellyfin shouldn’t require a VPN.
Isn’t it easier to set up a VPN than expose it to the internet?
and then you are giving access to your lan to people whose computer you don’t control and might be full of malware.
Tbh I forgot about giving access to others, my homelab is for me only lol
You only have to give them access to a specific port on a specific machine, not your entire LAN.
My VPN has a ‘media’ usergroup who can only access the, read-only, NFS exports of my media library.
If you’re just installing Wireguard and enabling IP forwarding, yeah it would not be secure. But using a mesh VPN, like Tailscale/Headscale, gives you A LOT more tools to control access.
Oh absolutely, difference being that you only need to expose the service once, versus helping however many people set up VPNs to access the service on your LAN
I know way too many people who won’t remember to toggle it on, or just won’t deal with it
It’s just not convenient enough
It’s not this or that. Security comes in layers. So while I would assume that the Jellyfin developers do their best to secure their application, I acknowledge the fact that bugs do exist and that Jellyfin is developed in and for hobbyist contexts, and thus not scrutinised and pentested for vulnerabilities in the way software meant for professional environments would be. Therefore I’ll add an extra layer of security by putting it behind a VPN that only whitelisted clients can access. If a vulnerability is detected, I can be sure it hasn’t already been exploited to compromise my server because we’re all “among friends” there.
Kinda defeats the purpose of a media server built to be used by multiple people
No need to expose jellyfin to the internet if you selectively allow peers on your lan via wireguard.
Easy for me but not my aunts, cousins or father in law to setup and use.
This attitude is why Plex remains popular.
I’d rather just not use it at that point
Fair, you do you, I get a lot of value out of it instead.
The difference is that my friends get a lot of value out of my server, as they don’t need to use any technology they’re unfamiliar with.
Use a VPN, it’s not ideal but it’s secure.
Somehow difficult to install on a TV though.
That’s why you do it at your router or gateway and then set a route for the Jellyfin server through the VPN adapter. That way any device on your network will flow through the tunnel to the Jellyfin server including TVs
Oh yes, the routers and gateways that most people have that are isp provided that may not actually have open VPN or wireguard support.
Those ones?
Also putting a VPN in someone else’s house so that all their Network traffic goes through your gateway is pretty damn extreme.
What? No, you can do a tiny reverse proxy/vpn on a stick with something like a RPi. Configure it and give it to them. Then they point their Jellyfin client on their device to the IP of the RPi instance on their network and that creates the tunnel back to your VPN endpoint and server.
And for VPNs at a router level you can inject routes and leave th default route going out through your ISP, you don’t need to, nor want to, have all traffic going through it.
Which again implies that you have a router that allows you to do so. It’s not always the case. For tech enthusiast people that’s the case. But not for everyone.
I tried to do the same thing at first, but it was a pain, there were tons of issues.
Don’t reverse proxies like pangolin just do the job? Does it have to be VPN in this particular concept? VPN isn’t like immune to vulnerabilities.
Reverse proxy doesn’t really get you much security. If there is an application level issue a reverse proxy will not help
Hmmm, I’m a bit rusty on this but can’t one put an auth gate in front of the application, handled by the reverse proxy?
You can, that would actually give you security. Not sure how many people do that. I assumed a straight reverse proxy without any auth
I see thanks. I’ll think about it more.
Reverse proxy will let anyone connect to it. VPN, you can create keys/logins for your intended users only. Having said that, from what I could see, nothing in the security fixes were to do with authentication. I think (just from a cursory look), they could only be exploited, if at all from an authenticated user session.
But personally, something like jellyfin where the number of people I want to be able to access it is very limited, stays behind a VPN. Better to limit your potential attack surface as much as you can.
Pangolin is based off of Traefik if I’m not mistaken, should be able to use Traefiks IP-Allowlist middleware to blacklist all IP addresses and only whitelisting the known few.
If the people you want to have access have static, exclusive ip addresses. Which is pretty unusual, these days.
or use the ldap auth plugin with your source of truth, put it behind a reverse proxy, protect it with fail2ban and anubis. there are ways of exposing it safely.
Do not rely on an OIDC/LDAP provider with Jellyfin, you cannot run these in front of your proxy otherwise Jellyfin applications will not be able to communicate with the server.
Blacklist all IP address and whitelist the known few, no need for Fail2Ban or a WAF.
you totally can use ldap or oidc it just requires more setup. you just ensure jellyfin and your source of truth talk on their own subnet, docker can manage it all for you. ldap can be setup to be ldaps with ssl and never even leave the docker subnet anyways.
and yes I suppose you could rely on whitelists, but you’d have to manually add to the whitelist for every user, and god forbid if someone is traveling.
Y’all are assuming the security issue is something exploitable without authentication or has something to do with auth.
But it sounds like a supply chain issue which a VPN won’t protect you from.
The thing is, if you have non-technical users, you have to set up the VPN connection on the client site yourself, maybe on multiple machines and more than once, if they decide to upgrade or even just reset their devices.
The problem here - it’s not me who requires access to my library, if someone isn’t willing or able to do it, I’m sorry but that’s just how it is. People should stop infantilize non-technical people, absolute majority of them is capable of navigating our world without much problems and I’m willing to help them if help is asked.
If my 60 y.o. mother with close to zero technical skills can do it with limited help (due to distance and other constraints) I’m pretty sure that majority of people with sound mind can.
Or you can not be arrogant towards your friends and family who have probably helped you on lots of occasions and will probably keep being there for you in the future.
Idk man, unconditional sharing feels pretty good, tbh. Making them jump through hoops isn’t really my jam. To me this kinda all plays into making a stronger bond with people that are close to me, so maybe we have different reasons for why we are sharing our stuff.
Inb4 “we are not the same” meme
I’m not arrogant, just don’t assume that people are dumb and inept. If they can’t or don’t want to give a bit of time to setup it, well how can someone be forced to use free service that causes momentarily inconvenience once to use. 😔
Pass. Users cause complexities. Complexities cause issues.
Having a program causes issues. Connecting it to the internet causes issues. Having a computer causes issues. Better turn your laptop off and throw it on the garbage.
This. And for everyone you just can’t figure it out on their own, there’s RustDesk for remote assistance. It, too, can be self-hosted.
So use a reverse proxy with authentiacation before access to Jellyfin is allowed. I use Caddy forward_auth with Authelia for this. Unless you want to use the apps, this works great.
Does that work for the Android and Android TV apps?
No. As I said, apps don’t work. I cobbled together an API key service in Rust but it is a bit too messy and single purpose for me to open source it right now. Maybe one day.
Got instructions or a site to point to on setting something like that up?
Honestly, I may have to write one at some point. I just used the documentation of those two tools to set it up.
Yeah, i have my 30 docker containers behind Headscale (Tailscale).
NetBird is coming for you
I have been planning to check out Netbird for couple of days. Is it a good alternative for headscale and pangolin?
It depends if you’re using Pangolin for private access or public exposure.
NetBird is a clean replacement for headscale/tailscale, but if your using pangolin specifically for its public tunnel feature then you’d need to keep pangolin.
Utilize authelia perhaps?
Doesn’t work with TVs
ldap auth will work on tvs
But that’s basically using the same built-in auth. If there’s an auth bypass I don’t think it makes a difference.
not really. you can disable the default jellyfin login and force it to use ONLY ldap.
So don’t use it outside your house? Pass
Nothing stops you from using it outside of your house.
I just love it when people post one sentence rebuttals without actually including any usable information what they are talking about.
Tailscale is a super easy vpn that gives you access to your home network from anywhere. And it’s free.
The solution is mentioned already - use vpn, it will solve 90% of the problems that you can encounter. Also you can serve multiple other services this way without exposing them.
It kind of does. Whatever and yes I’m aware of the list people keep posting and I’ve looked at it.