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Serve behind Traefik and rate limit password guesses
Kessinen released this
2026-09-05 17:12:28 +00:00 The deployment is a public hostname behind Traefik rather than a LAN-only
box, which changes two things.TLS is now terminated by the proxy, so Basic credentials are no longer in
cleartext. The container publishes no ports: doing so would leave an
unencrypted copy of the app on the host, bypassing the proxy. The hostname
lives in .env rather than compose.yaml, so no infrastructure detail is
committed and the MIT publication option stays open.The password is now the only thing between the internet and the app, and a
500 ms sleep is not a defence at that exposure. Wrong guesses are rate
limited per client address: five in a burst, then one per ten seconds,
answered with 429.Two details that decide whether this works at all:
- a request with no Authorization header is not charged. That is the
handshake every browser session opens with, and counting it would lock the
household out for simply opening the app a few times. - X-Forwarded-For is believed only when the connection arrived from a private
address, i.e. through the proxy, and then only its last entry, which is the
one the proxy observed. A direct client could otherwise forge a fresh
address per attempt and walk past the limiter entirely.
None of this substitutes for a strong password. It removes brute force as a
practical route, nothing more. PRD §3, §9 and §10 are updated: "no external
internet exposure" is no longer true.Downloads
- a request with no Authorization header is not charged. That is the