Secure access to Node-RED using Cloudflare

General
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Just noticed that Cloudflare now has a new service called "Access". This lets you apply a login layer using Cloudflare's servers rather than your own.

It is actually free for 5 users - that's not all that clear from their site and you do have to register either a credit card or PayPal even for free use. You can choose either of the 2 tiers, they are both completely free as long as you don't register more than 5 users.

I'm going to try this as soon as I get some time as it looks like a neat way to get secured access to Node-RED (at home lets say or on a VPS) without having to mess with security locally.

You do, of course, have to make sure that nobody can reach your Node-RED service except through Cloudflare so you need some kind of firewall in front of your service.

Thought I would let people know in case you are interested.

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Interesting Julian. Have you also had a look at Ngrok?
https://ngrok.com/

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Yes indeed though that is more a network proxy service. This is a web proxy. Both can be useful in their own ways. But I like the idea of only allowing http access rather than at the network level.

There are lots of alternatives of course, a long-time favourite is to use SSH to provide a poor-man's VPN service. Just be sure to move the external port away from the default 22 or you will have every bot under the sun trying continuously to get through the door. Also port 22 is often blocked in enterprise environments, similarly for many VPN solutions. Even Ngrok may be blocked from some locations.