Using WAN port of my router for a simple server

I want to see the outdoor temperature as easily as possible. What if I connect a simplest server and simple HTML page with temperature data to the WAN port. Because I know my public IP address (https://whatismyipaddress.com/", I could see the temperature with my phone. I think a hard coded web page is hard to crack, but there should be a small delay between requests, or otherwise some one could use all my bandwidth for requests.

Do you see any problems?

Yes.

Tell how You intend to do this. So far I ask how You will interface the temperature sensor with the Wifi, or homepage, or whatever.

You will need to forward a port in your router to the IP address of the device providing the web page. (Port 80 is the default for HTTP)

That's not really the risk. You will be exposing a web server to the internet, it will be scanned and found then attempts to break into it will happen automatically. You will be using library software, which is publicly available and probably has been cracked by someone somewhere. The risk is that if someone gets into your device they use that access as a gateway to the rest of your network and whatever it on it.

At the very least include something that reports every attempt to connect to the server and gives you the IP address for the origin of the connection.

This is why I do not use things like Ring door bells, far to risky.

Have you paid your internet provider for a fixed and reserved IP address ?

I think flooding my net with data requests could be a problem. Arduino with Ethernet card is not very vulnerable probably. It is not possible to program Flash SW from the net and so on.
Linux or Windows are an other thing, they can be cracked and their server SW will be too.

No. If it changes, it is not great problem. Usually they stay constant for some time.

They might do, but are you assuming that the 'WAN' port on your router is an IP address on the Internet that all ports are open to ?

Is your 'public' IP Address NATed ?

Never say never, but I would be less concerned about external hackers being able to crack an Arduino web site than almost almost any other system. There's no O/S to get root access on and it would be very difficult to execute custom code.

That said, you could use Blynk to do this and there would be no need for a hole in your firewall.

That is ofcourse a good question, especially because I don't know every trick of Internet providers do. But I think they say that WAN is open to internet.

Ah, Blynk is not free. I think WAN port is open and separate from the safe normal Internet ports of a router. That is why, I want to be a bit more carefull when I connect something into it.

Last I looked it was, or at least you could get a number of free widgets to get started, which would be more than enough for your needs. That was a while back though - has the free intro been discontinued?

By the way, is Ethernet shield discontinued on Arduino shop. There was some dead links on its SW page. Are there any other good places to get the board and its SW.
Good night
LM

The way you do it is to forward the relevant port (80 for HTTP) to the local IP address of the device providing the web server, that's all you need. I would think all but the nastiest 'free' routers from ISPs would have port forwarding capability. Personally I use a Draytek router as they are far better than the 'free' ones.

My concern comes from a report about a cheap CCTV camera where it was found to be possible to upload code to it by forcing a factory reset. The problem with things like this is you cannot know what someone else has worked out how to do.

I can't disagree - I closed the firewall to my Linux box that has hosting some minor pages showing house temp/humidity etc. because there were so many attack attempts. I'd feel less nervous hosting pages on an Uno, but these days I'd be more inclined to push the data to one of the IoT sites with a free tier.

I could check how much would cheapest 4G connection cost, because I have an unused router.

Yes. Allthough this is more like an hobby project than serious home automation.

I think you missed my point, your web server will be found by automatic scans of what is on the internet, then it will be probed automatically to see if there is a way in. Unless you write your own server code completely you are vulnerable to whatever known vulnerabilities there are in whatever library you use. Whether it ever actually matters is impossible to say until it is too late.

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