Immich is an amazing piece of software, but because it holds such personal data I have only ever felt comfortable accessing it via VPN or mTLS. This meant that I could never share any photos, which had been really bugging me.
So I built a self-hosted app, Immich Public Proxy, which allows you to share individual files or full galleries to the public, without ever exposing your Immich instance. This uses Immich’s existing sharing functionality, so other than the initial configuration, everything else is handled within Immich.
You can see a live demo here, which is serving a gallery straight out of my own Immich instance:
The proxy provides a barrier of security between the public and Immich, and only allows through requests which you have publicly shared. When it receives a valid request it talks to Immich locally via API and returns only those shared images. It does not require an API key, as the share link itself is all that is needed to query Immich.
If you share an individual image, by default the proxy will return the original image file (rather than a gallery page). This means you can directly embed images in websites / blogs / note-taking apps / etc.
It exposes no ports, allows no incoming data, and has no API to exploit. I don’t even use the Immich SDK to further reduce any possible attack surface.
Features:
- Supports sharing photos and videos.
- Supports password-protected shares.
- All usage happens through Immich - you won’t need to touch this app after the initial configuration.
Setup takes about 30 seconds - just take a copy of the docker-compose.yml file and change the address for your Immich instance.
Great work! 😎 Starred.
You can see [a live demo here](https://immich-demo.note.sx/share/ffSw63qnIYMtpmg0RNvOui0Dpio7BbxsObjvH8YZaobIjIAzl5n7zTX5d6EDHdOYEvo), which is serving a gallery straight out of my own Immich instance.
Sorry, off topic, but is this what Immich looks like out of the box, or have you used any other plugins?
Immich Public Proxy looks like exactly what I want for my family photos, but I haven’t looked into Immich yet. The demo looks beautiful, and is simple enough for the grandparents to use 🙂
Not default but can highly reccommend immich its great.
Thanks 🙂
Sorry, off topic, but is this what Immich looks like out of the box, or have you used any other plugins?
No - this is using lightGallery. You can see what Immich looks like on their demo.
Thank you 🙂
Immich on its own looks good, but if I set it up, I think I’ll definitely install lightGallery to go with it 🙂
Okay…I’m terribly confused by this project here, so maybe you can clarify some things.
First, looking through the code, it seems you’re literally just taking input requests and replaying them to a target host. So if Immich is updated with changes that proxy doesn’t have yet, everything breaks.
How is this adding more security than any other proxy?
You’re correct - it is indeed taking input requests and proxying them to Immich.
How is this adding more security than any other proxy?
To allow sharing with Immich using a normal reverse proxy like Caddy or Traefik, you need to expose public access to the Immich
/api/path, along with a few other potentially dangerous paths. Any existing or future vulnerability has the potential to compromise your Immich instance.This proxy is more secure as it does not allow public access to the Immich API path or to any Immich path. The only incoming requests which are honoured are requests like this:
https://your-proxy-url.com/share/ffSw63qnIYMtpmg0RNvOui0Dpio7BbxsObjvH8YZaobIjIAzl5n7zTX5d6EDHdOYEvoIf the shared link does not resolve to something that you have intentionally shared from Immich, it will return a 404.
if Immich is updated with changes that proxy doesn’t have yet, everything breaks.
The only thing which would break it is if Immich changed the format of a few select API endpoints. And if that ever happens it’s a very easy fix.
Or you could similar just block those routes in whatever reverse proxy you’d use out in front of the server?
I don’t run Immich myself, but just trying to understand the technical issues and this particular solution. Seems like they should have a public facing /shared route that doesn’t require access to any others, so I see your point.
Or you could similar just block those routes in whatever reverse proxy you’d use out in front of the server?
You can’t. You need to allow public access to your Immich instance’s
/api/path to use Immich’s built-in sharing.
You seem to understand neither security nor privacy.
I get to give you access to all my photos so that you can just proxy calls to my server?
Just share your own damn server people, this “I’m behind 7 proxies” bs is getting tiring.
You‘re supposed to host this yourself.
Then what’s the fucking point? I’m “exposing” my own server either way! And now I’m adding a new system to the mix which can have vulnerabilities of its own.
This is stupid.
This thing reduces the attack surface of the inmich installation.
If it is good, or bad or fitting to your security model can only be said by you. But honestly it sounds like a sensible thing to do
And it adds its own “attack surface”.
And? It lowers the attack surface of Immich. Attack surface is about the surface, whatever an attacker can use to get leverage. This acts as an intermediate between Immich and a public viewer, controlling how a threat actor can access a private Immich server. It helps reduce external attack surface while increasing overall system complexity. Since the project is small, it is easy to audit the code.
I rarely post, but… Chill, man!
I’m “exposing” my own server either way!
Put it on a different server then. It prevents your Immich server from ever needing to be exposed publicly. That’s the entire point.
This is stupid.
You seem to understand neither security nor privacy.
Put it on a different server then. It prevents your Immich server from ever needing to be exposed publicly. That’s the entire point.
This is stupid.
Repeat after me - proxies are not used for security.
This is a cargo-cult believe in this community. There’s a weird sense that it’s “dirty” to have a server exposed “directly” to the internet. But if I put it behind something else that forwards traffic to the server then that’s somehow safe!
Security is something you do not something you have. The false sense of security with proxy bullshit like this crappy project is not giving you anything. You’re taking a well supported community project (immich) and installing another app in front of it which appears to be some dude’s personal project and telling me that is more secure. As though that project is better written?
Install immich. Forward ports to it (or proxy it with nginx if needed for hostname routing (but don’t expect this to be more secure)), and keep it up to date and use good passwords.
some dude’s personal project
Yes, it’s my project.
if I put it behind something else that forwards traffic to the server then that’s somehow safe!
It doesn’t “forward traffic”, it validates traffic and answers only valid requests, without needing privileged access to Immich. I think you are confusing the word “proxy” with meaning something like Traefik.
telling me that is more secure. As though that project is better written?
Yes, it’s more secure to use this than exposing Immich. No it’s not “better written” than Immich; it fulfills a completely different purpose.
It’s 400 lines of code in total, feel free to review it and tell me any flaws, oh mighty security expert.
Sorry - it’s a pointless application. I won’t sugar coat it. If anyone things it’s “more safe” to run this soon-to-be-abandonware in front of a properly supported project then they deserve what’s coming to them.
Hahah. You must be bored.
Security is something you do
Like by reducing the attack surface on internal APIs?
I don’t even necessarily disagree with you, everybody has to decide themselves if this app offers enough upsides to be worth the downsides.
That being said, instantly calling OP stupid and their project crappy is just not the way to get your point across and in general considered a dick move.
general considered a dick move.
Sometimes that’s the point. This project is so stupid it simply deserves derision. I couldn’t care less if anyone here is swayed. It’s lemmy - if I’m not echoing what everyone else is saying I’ll be voted down anyway.
Like by reducing the attack surface on internal APIs?
This is my other favorite term the community has picked up and uses like it’s a mic drop without understanding it.
It’s a proxy my friend. It forwards requests to the other server. And you’ve added an untested personal project in front of it.
But wait! You don’t want to just expose your immich proxy to the internet do you? I’ll write DavesAwesomeProxy that you can put in front of that proxy! Will it be secure? Maybe. Will I support it? What’s with all the questions!
It forwards requests to the other server.
No raw requests are passed to Immich. All incoming data is validated / sanitized. Requests are only made to specific whitelisted API endpoints. I don’t know why you’re so angry 🤷
Repeat after me - proxies are not used for security.
If you believe this, you are extremely uninformed at best. Proxies are routinely used for security in situations like this and are used to secure many of the apps that you use on the public internet today.
Thank you OP for creating this app! Please ignore any negativity from ignorant detractors.
Proxies are not used for security by anyone but morons. Firewalls, WAFs, etc. all provide some sort of benefit. What is this application doing that is of use? Just “not exposing your server directly”? Well, it is being exposed directly now - so it’s a very secure application written by a security professional then? Or should I put it behind another proxy just to be sure? Maybe 7 proxies are enough?
OP is well meaning - but this was a waste of time for anyone else to use. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
You have clearly not understood what it does. It basically acts as a basic WAF by blocking the access to various paths that are required by the default sharing feature but not by this “proxy”.
Why so angry?
This lets you share photos without directly exposing Immich to the internet.
I don’t see the point in getting so worked up over someones project they made and decided to share, it’s not like you’re being forced to use it.
I get to give you access to all my photos so that you can just proxy calls to my server?
This is a self-hosted app… The only person who has access to your photos is you - that’s the entire point of using this.
Couldnt this in theory also be handled by using cloudflares WAF and disallowing every entry to protected end-points?
You’d still need to allow access to the
/api/path, and even public endpoints could potentially expose you to a vulnerability. It’s entirely up to your threat model.Knowing what happened in 2014 with iCloud, I’m not prepared to take that risk. Especially as Immich is under heavy development and things can often change and move around. At least this way I know that it will either safely fetch the data or simply fail.
Please Proton team port over this UI to drive.
Oh man, total flashback to when I did this for Owncloud https://github.com/Fmstrat/shorten
A simpler way to protect a private service with a reverse proxy is to only forward HTTP GET requests and only for specific paths.
It’s extremely difficult to attack a service with only GET requests.
The security of which URLS are accessible without authentication would be up to immich.
I don’t know the Immich API, but I’ve seen several REST APIs that used the usual pattern of
GET /api/v1/user/<id> - read user POST /api/v1/user/ - create user ...but also allowed
GET /api/v1/user/<id> - read user GET /api/v1/user/?action=create - create user ...Yup, also some APIs use GET for everything. It’s a pain. And it means that filtering by verb only helps if you’re intimately familiar with the API. And even then, only if you keep up with changes as they happen. So really, only if you’re developing the API yourself.
(another pretty peeve of mine is “rest” APIs that use 200 response codes for everything)
Thank you very much for the work. I pondered a few times how I could do that safely as I don’t feel like hosting it that publicly.
I run Jellyfin publicly behind Authelia but there arent any personal files inside so if they breach it, it would give them only movies, muaic and tv shows…This is excellent! Thank you!
