So, I have a few services (Jellyfin, Home Assistant, etc) that I am running, and have been acessing via their IP’s and port numbers.
Recently, I started using NGINX so that I could setup entries in my Pi Hole, and access my services via some made up hostname (jellyfin.home, homeassistant.home, etc).
This is working great, but I also own a few domains, and thought of adding an SSL cert to them as well, which I have seen several tutorials on and it seems straight forward.
My questions:
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Will there be any issues running SSL certs if all of my internal service are inward facing, with no WAN access? My understanding is that when I try to go to jellyfin.mydomainname.com, it will do the DNS lookup, which will point to a local address for NGINX on my network, which the requesting device will then point to and get the IP of the actual server.
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Are there risks of anything being exposed externally if I use an actual CA for my cert? My main goal is to keep my home setup off of the internet.
If you’re using a third party CA, periodically renewing certificates in my experience. The authority needs to be able to connect to the device it’s issuing a cert to, for it to handle a security challenge iirc.
If you set up your own CA, none that I know of.
Then I don’t understand the need for neither domain names nor third party signed certs. Can’t you use PiHole as a configurable DNS server, just make any domain name go to any of your local devices?
You can use a DNS challenge, that way letsencrypt doesn’t need access. It’s very convenient.
Neat, might have to look more into that the next time I redo my setup.
DNS challenge is the way to go. I just did it couple of weeks ago. Here is youtube video of the process. He uses duckdns but I personally used cloudflares dns
That was my concern too. NGINX would need access to the internet in order to renew the certs.
Yes, that is how it is currently setup, and how I may end up leaving it. Right now, I can go to jellyfin.home, and that request gets routed to my pihole which has custom DNS entries, which then points to NGINX and NGINX forwards it to the correct IP/ port. All works as expected, except it is not https (which is not that big of a deal since all my stuff is restricted from the outside world). Just an OCD itch I’m trying to scratch.
Hey, I advocate https even for LAN only, most people don’t think about the Wifi attack vector. That’s why I use self signed certs on my LAN stuff, I just don’t care about that yellow padlock that disappears when I trust the website. I’ve only experienced a single app ever that didn’t accept self-signed (I’m looking at you wallabag app).
I can understand how it would be different if family members suddenly starts asking if it’s true when their devices tell them the webside is potentially dangerous.
People… watching money?