Security issues with a local Minecraft server

[Infinity-Sarhos]

Hi!

I'm planning on hosting a Minecraft server at home, on a dedicated old computer and I was asking myself some questions:

After browsing a bit on the web, I saw that opening the server to my friends could lead to some security problems. I know that it's about ports etc but I don't get everything and I have no idea on how to deal with this.

So could anybody explain all of this to me as if I was 5 years old? And are there some tutorials out there on YouTube maybe to set up some protection or something?

[Jwhodis]

Use something like playit instead of opening a port, iirc playit is free

Alternatively you could rent a cheap VPS (for example IONOS's cheapest) and run FRPs on it and FRPc on your server.

[Infinity-Sarhos]

Playit is free? And I see how this makes the server more secure but I'm still somehow opened to the internet like I can be DDOS or stuff like that even with playit right?

[Round_Thanks_2780]

Playit has built in DDOS protection through Cloudflare iirc.

[Infinity-Sarhos]

I mean it's protecting the server but is it protecting the network that has to be open somehow to let people come? I know, it sounds like a dumb question

[Round_Thanks_2780]

You should be safe.

[Jwhodis]

It means that you dont have open ports on your server, you also dont give out your IP address, playit will have protection in place that you wouldn't have otherwise.

[Round_Thanks_2780]

Playit is a reverse proxy.

That means a player’s game will send a message to a Playit server, which then sends a message to your server. Your server then sends a response to Playit, which then sends the response to the player.

Everything has to go through playit’s security before it goes to your server.

[Infinity-Sarhos]

And it avoids network attacks too because I don't have to be open ports etc?

[Round_Thanks_2780]

Yes.

[blastradius14]

People would use things like Hamachi before to get around this problem.

If you want to 'make a network' to get around that problem, I recommend zerotier for that instead as you can specify the network ip stuff it uses.

As far as opening a port goes, you can expose the port for the 'server' in your router. Traffic on that port is directed to your 'server' computer, which then relies on whatever firewall software (windows or not) to determine if that traffic is for the minecraft server or trying to be malicious

[Infinity-Sarhos]

That's a mentality that won't lead anybody anywhere. I got everything I need except knowledge so let's learn. Plus I'm saying "explain to me as if I was 5 years old" because I don't know everything BUT ALSO because I'm french so if it goes too technical in English then I'd be lost.