do you know for sure that nothing is listening on it? Do you scan every device you connect to your network?
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Opening a port on consumer routers does not mean that all devices are open. Normally you forward a port to a host+port in the local network. In most cases some server which you control. All other devices are not affected by opening a port.
This doesn’t really apply if you’re port forwarding to a specific device. In that case you know that you have told your firewall to forward port 80 & 443 (for example) to your web server and you know what ports that has open. I would not be using UPNP on the other hand as that seems dangerous especially in the IOT era.
and, even if you scan them, how do you know that a port knocker isn't there waiting to the secret knock?
I am confused by this question, if you forward a port then the only device you should be interested in is the device you are forwarding to surely? If you are worried about devices on your network, then surely since they are already on the network side of the router and so if they were going to do something nefarious then opening a port is the least of your worries.
Honestly trying to understand the point you were trying making.
I am Sure because the port forward is to a specific IP in my DMZ - therefor no one can just plug a device and open something
It's typically against the terms of service to open ports less than 1024 (well known ports) of most ISP's for personal internet. That, and there are bots that probe for insecure and misconfigured stuff constantly. Spin up a VPS and take a look at the SSH logs. What if a zero day vulnerability occurs? Are you going to be able to react quick enough to prevent someone from doing damage?
Cloudflare is nice because you no longer need to update your DNS A records, plus it caches data, automatically enables SSL, and absorbs bot traffic for you. Have also tried the Wireguard + VPS route, but that gets expensive because most charge ingress and egress.
It's typically against the terms of service to run any server.