When you host something on LAN only you are not exposing the service to the wider internet directly.
This means someone would need access to your LAN or local area network first (such as your WiFi password) before being able to reach said service.
Now when you expose something directly to the internet, in a way that for example it displays a publicly accessible webpage, it makes it easier for anyone to reach that webpage, and potentially figure out your login and password information through brute force. Or some other type of exploit that allows full bypass of the login credentials.
Some self-hoster’s choose to keep their “more sensitive” services on the LAN only, and then use a VPN (that’s hosted privately) to access their LAN remotely from anywhere in the world.
With a VPN hosted on your LAN it provides a good layer of security as someone would first need to have access to your VPN to then potentially try and get access into your services.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this out, but I knew all of that and didn’t really address the question. I was asking why the commenter above mine was using an auth service, like Keycloak, on LAN.
Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of using something like this on LAN only?
For me, I have multiple OIDC compatible systems (Proxmox, Netbox, Synology, Zabbix, Vault, etc).
So keycloak offers a SSO option to make my life easier with a single account to worry about instead of individual ones.
Plus MFA because it’s cool?
for many people homelabbing is a way to gain knowledge they can use on the job.
other than that: proper single sign on across your services is nice even if you don’t expose them to anybody else.
When you host something on LAN only you are not exposing the service to the wider internet directly.
This means someone would need access to your LAN or local area network first (such as your WiFi password) before being able to reach said service.
Now when you expose something directly to the internet, in a way that for example it displays a publicly accessible webpage, it makes it easier for anyone to reach that webpage, and potentially figure out your login and password information through brute force. Or some other type of exploit that allows full bypass of the login credentials.
Some self-hoster’s choose to keep their “more sensitive” services on the LAN only, and then use a VPN (that’s hosted privately) to access their LAN remotely from anywhere in the world.
With a VPN hosted on your LAN it provides a good layer of security as someone would first need to have access to your VPN to then potentially try and get access into your services.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this out, but I knew all of that and didn’t really address the question. I was asking why the commenter above mine was using an auth service, like Keycloak, on LAN.
It has been answered a few times, thanks.
No worries, not sure how I misunderstood the question, but hopefully it helps someone else out who’s getting into self-hosting.
It will still sync to all devices. And if you have an always on vpn to your home network, there really is no need to expose it to the public
Not being impacted by security issues like these for one