when reading through the jellyfin with chromecast guide i realized that it would probably be less effort to just let the casting api be public, with the added bonus that i could then cast my library to any device that supports it. but that seems like it would paint a giant target on the server.
what’s the recommended way of doing stuff like this? ideally i want to be able to go to someone’s house and just play some of my media on their tv.
not that any of this is doable in the near future, since i’m behind cgnat and won’t get my colocated bounce server up until spring.
Allowing external access to your services means that any misconfiguration or bugs can be exploited to gain control of your machine(s).
Once that happens they can be fucked with, your data stolen, your resources co-opted for someone else’s use, etc. and often times it can be made to look as though whatever bad shit it’s doing is your doing.
So, understand your security posture. You can’t be too careful. Taking over weak or exposed machines is a global industry now.
But you can, in fact, be too careful. Availability is one arm of the security triad.
If whatever complex configuration you have set up to avoid exposing something to the Internet is incompatible with something and what you wanted to do can’t be done, or if you look and see that setting all that up would be too hard and don’t bother to expose the service at all, then your security posture is incorrect because your service is just as unavailable as if someone else broke it.
At the same time, taking over exposed machines has never been more difficult.