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Safety Tips
Table of Contents:
Part A: Local Network Tips
- Never enable UPnP
- Port Forwarding's potential problems
- How Multiplayer-Possible is safer than port forwarding
- What most people can do with your IP (not very much!)
- How to hide your IP
Part B: Installing safe plugins, mods, and adventure maps
- Understand that the vast majority of them are safe and legit
- Use trusted sites only
- Don't click on big green [Download] advertisements
- How to decompile any jar file
- Don't download an installer for an adventure map
- Why Skript is safer than many plugins at once
Part C: Alternative: Reverse Proxies
- Pinggy.io
- Ngrok
Part D: Alternative: Renting a Server
- Don't share your console password
- Aternos.org
UPnP, short for "universal plug-n-play", has been well documented as having security flaws where a hacker could potentially gain extra access in your network when you enable it.
Most wifi routers have UPnP disabled by default.
When UPnP is enabled, some mods out there let you host a server without port forwarding, without requiring players to download any mods themselves.
Some people on various forum discussions have said that they used it because it was "that much easier for gaming" and they "couldn't do without it" despite the risks.
If you have UPnP disabled, there is zero point in trying to enable it, as you'd have to talk to a network administrator anyhow. At that point, it is no more convenient than port forwarding, and you'd be better off port forwarding or using Multiplayer-Possible.
Port forwarding allows anyone on the internet to connect to a specific port that you forward.
As long as you forward a port dedicated to a video game, such as 25565, and not any other port for important or sensitive information, the risks are only griefing and temporary denial of service attacks.
There are only ~4.294 billion IPv4 addresses in the entire world.
That's a number small enough that a computer could loop through if given enough time.
It has been in the news that a griefing group had invented a bot which checked every IP address on the internet for port 25565, the default port of Minecraft.
Some of these servers would not have a whitelist enabled, and thus the griefing group would join these would-be-private Minecraft servers and grief them.
If you port forward 25565 and plan on using this for a long-term survival or creative world, make sure to enable a whitelist, or have some measure in place such as making occasional copies of your world folder as a backup.
You could also configure your Minecraft server.properties to use a different port and require that players type it in. When players don't type in the port, Minecraft will assume it's 25565.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is when multiple bots all try to join your forwarded port at the same time. This could slow down or temporarily disable wifis that are port forwarded for the duration of the attack. It won't last forever though, and attackers can't keep up forever- it's normally pretty costly to do so.
If you don't enable port forwarding, you remain immune to port scanners, and mostly immune to Distributed Denial of Service, even if someone manages to get ahold of your IP. Your router will automatically block random bots on the internet the moment they try to connect, as it always does when port forwarding isn't enabled.
Instead of asking that you reduce your wifi's network restrictions for multiplayer, potentially exposing yourself to bots, Multiplayer-Possible works well within those existing restrictions.
The current version lets you temporarily open a connection from one port on your computer to one port on your friend's computer. Once you quit the program, the connection ends and the port closes. You can thus quickly disable access at any time.
This port is essentially randomly chosen based on the nickname you and your friend agree on, and comes in the range of 20,000-60,000. If an outsider on a different IP address than you and your friend learned of your IP and nickname, they would not be able to connect, as you are only allowing one IP address (your friend's) on a specific port to join.
If that doesn't make sense, it's essentially a private one-off connection instead of allowing anyone in the whole wide world to join. Much safer for you and your family!
As long as you don't have port forwarding or UPnP enabled, the main thing that someone can do with your IP address is find your rough approximate location.
If you go to whatismyip.com you can see what location your own IP address reveals. For me, it reveals not my house or neighborhood, but the closest Internet Service Provider to it.
If you already have a VPN, you can enable it, and Multiplayer-Possible should still work if you give out your VPN's IP instead of your real IP.
Just be wary that VPN IPs can change when you toggle the VPN on and off.
The average VPN costs $12 a month.
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