Hey guys, For my home server I am using a Cloudflare domain name to access it, but I noticed today that my connections are secured using the Google Trust Services LLC certs, rather than the Let’s Encrypt certs Nginx Proxy Manager uses… so I’m assuming that cloudflare is having a ball sniffing all my traffic before forwarding my requests to my server…
Is there a way around this? Do other registrars do this??
Thanks!
Are you using cloudflares protection or proxy? That orange toggle next to the a record?
If so, then cloudflare is acting as a middle man and will use their SSL certs.
Ohhh wow I can’t believe I forgot about that, I feel so dumb hahaha.
Are there any benefits to keeping this switched on? Other than than the security I mean, is the tradeoff between privacy and security worth it in your opinion?
That’s something you’d have to decide in your threat model.
Do you think cloudflare, which is trusted by many, many large organizations would do anything malicious with your traffic? It’s unlikely, but if that is something your concerned about them turn it off. I don’t think for most self hosted services it’s necessary but I also don’t think it matters either way.
Good point, I’ll leave it on then. Thanks for your help!
You can disable cloudflare’s tls termination by setting the DNS record to DNS only. Be aware that this then bypasses their cdn, probably making things slower, and bypasses most of the security they put in place for you.
Other cdns may or may not do similar. It’s hard to do WAF when you can’t see the traffic.
Note that a registrar and a cdn are different things. It’s possible to remain on cloud flare for your domain registration and DNS while using a different cdn.
Ah I see, thank you for the reply!
What would you recommend? I like the idea of the privacy but having that security does also sound good…
The way I see it, using their Zero Trust tunnels and such, the benefits out weigh any perceived threat from them. They handle so much traffic anymore, my little bit of data isn’t even going to be a small blip in their infrastructure. They assess the traffic for threats on the fly, they aren’t going to attempt to keep a copy of everything their system see’s, that would be just way to much to deal with. Hell of a lot better than a marketing company (Google) holding your email and the like.
