I admit that I’m somewhat of a novice here so please excuse me if this is a silly question. I’m having trouble with my server staying connected for remote viewing. Half of the time the external connection is fine and streams perfectly. However the other half it is unable to connect and requires my re-setting, re-enabling, or re-starting the remote function through the setting. After I fiddle with those setting for about 5 min it will come back online and work fine remotely.
From what I’ve seen on the site and from the Plex help pages, the best bet is to enable Manual Port Forwarding. However, before I press forward with this, I wanted to see if there were any security concerns with doing this? My server is on a dedicated Mac Mini. Does having a forwarded port on a Mac Server open my computer, or others on my network, to any kind security vulnerabilities? Thanks!
@OttoKerner said:
The security situation will be exactly the same as with the automatic port forwarding (which you are doing currently).
Thank for your reply. If you could help educate me, what does having an open port mean? Could someone “scan” that opening and do something to exploit my computer? Is the open port exclusively for Plex Server/how is that defined if it’s only by a internal IP address? What if the application were to close, would there be a way into my computer? Thanks and sorry for what I’m sure is a novice question.
@hf995 said:
Thank for your reply. If you could help educate me, what does having an open port mean? Could someone “scan” that opening and do something to exploit my computer?
Yes, an open port can be detected by scanning.
Whether or not the attacker can exploit, that depends on whether there is a vulnerability inside of Plex Server. Currently there are none known.
Is the open port exclusively for Plex Server/how is that defined if it’s only by a internal IP address? What if the application were to close, would there be a way into my computer?
The port forwarding is directed to a port which is used by Plex Server only.
When Plex Server is not running, the port will appear as ‘closed’ to the outside.
The definition of a port forwarding is always:
external port number → internal IP adress of your Plex Server machine + internal port number
the ‘external’ port number can be chosen almost freely
the ‘internal’ port number must be always 32400
The external port number is what an attacker might see when he is performing a ‘port scan’.
When you choose a random port number as your external port, an attacker cannot deduce from the port number alone, which type of service is behind this port (And therefore which kind of attack might be successful.
He’ll have to query it in some way to get a clue from the answer of Plex server what it is.
