this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Actual security differences with VPN vs encrypted proxy (ssh tunnel) for reaching services? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Currently I am using a reverse proxy with a doman name and my server is internet facing. I have been thinking of getting rid of this. Now, the go-to method seems to be a VPN (or zerotier etc). However, at work, we have a restriction that outside VPN is only allowed to use when the connection to our local network is blocked (no split-tunneling). This is annoying, as realistically I would need to use both at the same time.

So, I started thinking well how about just a proxy and point my browser through it and that should solve it? Then I started looking into proxies and man, I feel like I am more confused now than I was when I started.

Most of the stuff I find on the internet are not about self-hosted proxies but instead some proxy-services in order to circumvent IP blocking etc. Which means that everywhere it is said that proxies are not encrypted and are less secure (or have essentially no security at all) than VPN. But as far as I understood, if I do ssh tunneling then everything will be encrypted just fine?

So what is the actual security difference between the two? I understand that proxies might not be available for all applications and that VPN is generally used for routing all connection and not just a single application. But I am more interested in the security aspect of all this.

TLDR; difference in security between encrypted ssh tunnel (proxy) and a VPN?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Attack surface comparison really. If the only thing exposed is ssh, or your vpn, which do you trust to have fewer vulnerabilities in the exposed authentication system?

Probably a toss up.

Now if you’re talking about exposing multiple ssh endpoints vs a single vpn endpoint, that equation changes.

But a single relatively secure endpoint……difference is pretty negligible.