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.
Why not just expose Immich publicly with Traefik / Caddy / etc?
To share from Immich, you need to allow public access to your /api/ path, which opens you up to potential vulnerabilities. It’s up to you whether you are comfortable with that in your threat model.
This proxy provides a barrier of security between the public and Immich. It doesn’t forward traffic to Immich, it validates incoming requests and responds only to valid requests without needing privileged access to Immich.
Demo
You can see a live demo here, which is serving a gallery straight out of my own Immich instance.
Features
- Supports sharing photos and videos.
- Supports password-protected shares.
- Creating and managing shares happens through Immich as normal, so there’s no change to your workflow.
Install
Setup takes about 30 seconds:
-
Take a copy of the docker-compose.yml file and change the address for your Immich instance.
-
Start the container:
docker-compose up -d -
Set the “External domain” in your Immich Server Settings to be whatever domain you use to publicly serve Immich Public Proxy. Now whenever you share an image or gallery through Immich, it will automatically create the correct public path for you.
For more detail on the steps, see the docs on Github.
Oh man, total flashback to when I did this for Owncloud https://github.com/Fmstrat/shorten
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 requesting the related data from 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.
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.
The security of which URLS are accessible without authentication would be up to immich.
This is exactly the risk I’m wanting to mitigate. Immich is under heavy active development, and I want to abstract away from needing to worry whether the no-auth API URLs are safe to expose publicly.
At the end of the day I feel safer knowing that there is zero public access to any part of my Immich instance, which for me is what really matters.
Immich has a whole set of end-to-end automated tests to ensure they don’t accidentally make public any URLs they went to be private:
https://github.com/immich-app/immich/tree/main/e2e/src/api/specs
As a popular open source project, that would be e glaring security hole.
Using this proxy puts the trust in a far less popular project with fewer eyeballs on it, and introduces new risks that the author’s Github account is hacked or there’s vulnerability in he supply chain of this docker container.
It’s also not true that you “never need to touch it again” . It’s based on Node whose security update expire every two years. New image should be built at least every two years to keep to update with the latest Node security updates, which have often been in their HTTP/HTTPS protocol implementations, so they affect a range of Node apps directly exposed to the internet.
All good points, and Apple has some of the most skilled engineers in the world and The Fappening still happened.
It’s not possible for me to audit everything that’s happening security-wise in Immich, but I can fully understand what’s happening in this small codebase to my own satisfaction. At the end of the day I feel safer knowing that there is no public access to any part of my Immich instance.
It’s also not true that you “never need to touch it again”
I meant that you don’t need to use it to share photos, not that you never need to update your docker containers! 😱 Thanks, I have clarified that.
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 ...Yes, there are broken uses of the HTTP protocol verbs where filtering to GET won’t work.
Interestingly the recent D-Link NAS security flaw uses GET.
Good example. It’s true that an even a GET request not designed to mutate data might still fail to validate input, allowing a SQL injection attack or other attack that escalates to the privileges that the running app has.
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 🙂
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.
Not default but can highly reccommend immich its great.
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, music and tv shows…This is excellent! Thank you!
Great work! 😎 Starred.
Please Proton team port over this UI to drive.
Material 3?
A lot more than that, especially the UX part.
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.
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. It lets you share photos/videos/albums from Immich without giving anyone access to any part of your Immich server, thus significantly increasing your privacy and security.
It doesn’t forward any traffic to Immich, it creates essentially a WAF between the public and Immich. It validates all incoming requests and answers only valid requests, without needing privileged access to Immich.
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.
You‘re supposed to host this yourself.
removed by mod
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.
removed by mod
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.
It’s some rando’s project that has existed for “nearly a month”, has no community, is unlikely to have any rapid response to any issues, and probably won’t be supported for more than a year.
But sure - go ahead and run it for “security purposes”.
You can “reduce surface area” by simply putting in place nginx or apache (real supported software) and blacklisting the endpoints you don’t like.
I like to judge software based on its actually merit and not on the theoretical possibility it is vulnerable. It very well could be vulnerable, but without auditing it we are just speculating, which in the real world means nothing. Every project starts somewhere, without community, followers, and “5 years of support”. I am not saying I would trust this software in a security critical situation, just that your speculation means nothing.
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.
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”.
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.
removed by mod
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.
removed by mod
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 🤷
I rarely post, but… Chill, man!
For anyone else reading this completely unjustified and ill-intentioned criticism of the OP’s work: atzanteol obviously has no clue about security and therefore cannot comprehend the value of this library.
Do you often recommend people running single-developer maintained software that has existed for about a fortnight for “security purposes”?
Pretty cool!
Have you thought about whether this could also be used for limited write access? A common use-case for abusive image gallery services that you cannot ordinarily fulfil with Immich is shared albums where multiple people that e.g. attended the same event can collect pictures in without complex authentication (just a single shared secret or even just the link to the album).
I’d love that, too. Immich has more fine grained user control on their timeline, though.
