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109

CrowdSec vs Fail2Ban - What to use? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Matty_r@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey all, i've decided I should probably setup something else to help block nefarious IP addresses. I've been looking into CrowdSec and Fail2Ban but i'm not really sure the best one to use.

My setup is OpnSense -> Nginx Proxy Manager -> Servers. I think I need to setup CrowdSec/Fail2Ban on the Nginx Proxy Manager to filter the access logs, then ideally it would setup the blocks on OpnSense - but i'm not sure that can be done?

Any experience in a setup like this? I've found a few guides but some of them seem fairly outdated.

Edit: thanks everybody for the great info. General consensus seems to be with crowdsec so I'll go down that path and see how it goes.

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[–] Tournesol@feddit.fr 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I actually refrain from using Crowdsec since we found ourselves with a friend banning each other for no known reasons. (I swear I'm a good boy)

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As you probably know the crowdsec bouncer doesn't directly parse logs or do checks like F2B filters. It queries the crowdsec LAPI for decisions and applies them. The “allowed” or “whitelisted” IP logic is handled at the Security Engine or LAPI level, not by the bouncer itself.

You can whitelist an ip in /etc/crowdsec/whitelists.yaml or even whitelist decisions in the whitelist.yaml as such:

name: private-ips
description: Whitelist local and private IPs
whitelist:
  reason: "Allow local and private IPs"
  ip:
    - "127.0.0.1"
    - "192.168.1.0/24"
  cidr:
    - "10.0.0.0/8"

Then issue sudo systemctl reload crowdsec. Kind of the same concept as F2B's ignoreip option. If you are using Tailscale to administer the server, then it's easier to whitelist. IIRC, you can use cscli decisions add --type whitelist --ip 192.168.1.100 --duration 1y but it doesn't add them to the whitelist.yaml. Instead it keeps them in crowdsec's database managed by LAPI. To undo: cscli decisions delete --ip 192.168.1.100 --type whitelist

https://docs.crowdsec.net/u/getting_started/post_installation/whitelists/

[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 2 points 15 hours ago

With the bouncer setup, I assume I need to pass in where to look for logs or something for those to be passed into the lapi? I followed this CrowdSec and Nginx Proxy Manager , as far as I can tell everything is connected an running, I have crowdsec running on OpnSense via the plugin - it appears to be healthy as per the CrowdSec Console.

npm  | [nginx       ] nginx: [error] [lua] crowdsec.lua:62: init(): error loading captcha plugin: no recaptcha site key provided, can't use recaptcha       
npm  | [nginx       ] nginx: [error] [lua] ban.lua:37: new(): BAN_TEMPLATE_PATH and REDIRECT_LOCATION variable are empty, will return HTTP 403 for ban decisions
npm  | [nginx       ] nginx: [alert] [lua] crowdsec_openresty.conf:5):11: [Crowdsec] Initialisation done                                                    
npm  | [supervisor  ] starting service 'app'...                                                                                                             
npm  | [app         ] [5/5/2025] [11:26:30 PM] [Global   ] › ℹ  info      Using Sqlite: /data/database.sqlite                                               
npm  | [supervisor  ] all services started.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Care to elaborate? This seems kind of insanely specific.

Also, if you're using fail2ban, the same thing would happen.

[–] Tournesol@feddit.fr 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't have much to elaborate on ^^' but yeah, could have been an hyper specific case but that was my experience with it. I assumed my ip was banned on the crowd or something like that and even if my friend unbanned me twice, the ban came back. Don't know what really happened for sure.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ok...but crowdsec bans abusive IPs. Are you saying your actions got you banned for some reason?

Also, whitelist first. Ban second.

[–] Tournesol@feddit.fr 3 points 1 day ago

I truly don't think I did anything to get banned. The only thing "non-standard" I do, is having a seedbox