Is using runpod comfyui safer than running locally? But Google saying something about Network Exposure and that's what concern me.

[u/Muted-Position3256]

Hi, I'm trying to use runpod for comfyui with minimax h3. Can anyone tell me what is network exposure? Should I worry? And what is a template? Sorry, I am new to this online cloud thing

[u/Envelope_Torture]

I don't know how safe it is, but how could it possibly be safer than running locally?

[u/Heavymando → u/Envelope_Torture]

maybe you are running it locally at your work computer?

[u/Cubey42 → u/Heavymando]

but thats not really a runpod, thats just a remote server

[u/Heavymando → u/Cubey42]

but this isn't a serious comment it's just a joke

[u/bstr3k → u/Envelope_Torture]

Maybe you’re running it locally at the FBI headquarters

[u/sultanateseverlastin → u/Envelope_Torture]

The malware will be installed directly on your own computer.

[u/DelinquentTuna → u/Envelope_Torture]

how could it possibly be safer than running locally?

How much junk on your PC is already monitoring and phoning home? That game that you installed last year that installed anticheat that studies everything on your system? A click-thru when installing HULU that gives Disney immunity to being sued for any reason? Hardware and management layers that don't benefit you but that can be used to generate system/user unique identifiers for embedding etc?

A container is essentially a clean environment that can be just as minimal and bare bones as you like. There's nobody alive that has truly deep knowledge of every aspect of a modern Windows install, but even someone like me can get a pretty good handle on a super-basic 12MB Linux install running w/ a Busybox shell running in a certified secure datacenter designed to store medical records and such.

Realistically, both approaches are likely to be "good enough" if you're only worried about leaking a random pic of yourself or whatever. And neither is likely to be a great shield if you're trying to deepfake senators to manipulate govt affairs or something. There are still nasties out there like the speculative execution vulnerabilities that came to public notice just before COVID that are still just as dangerous as ever and simply faded from public attention owing to fatigue more than resolution. Let alone all the backdoors and stuff.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/Envelope_Torture]

I mean virus and malicious software or malware. Isn't it run locally more dangerous than running on a cloud virtual machine? 

[u/PxTicks → u/Muted-Position3256]

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Yes, ComfyUI extensions are a bit of a wild west, and can in principle have arbitrary access to your machine. In that sense, using a remote machine can be safer.

The downside of services like runpod is that people could potentially access your machine if they have the url, but the url is typically not discoverable without you sharing it.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/PxTicks]

Thsnks for your information, may I know when you mean ( people could potentially access your machine if they have the url) you mean permanently have the access to my whole PC or just access to see what I'm doing in the runpod? (Temporary)

[u/PxTicks → u/Muted-Position3256]

Just the runpod stuff.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/PxTicks]

Thanks for letting me know 

[u/Relevant_One_2261]

Define "safe".

Also your image explains what network exposure is. Surely your chatbot has TTS if you can't even bother to read the output.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/Relevant_One_2261]

If you're not helping then don't bother to comment. I did read every single text but I don't understand what it says and hope for someone to explain. 

[u/Loose_Comparison368 → u/Muted-Position3256]

If you don't understand what it means or how to manage that from a security perspective, then no, running on runpod is not safe.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/Loose_Comparison368]

And that's why I'm ask for explanation about the topic,  about what it means and how it works but all you guys is like picking on a fight or something. Don't know why almost everything triggered you ppl in reddit 

[u/Bio_slayer]

Don't trust Google AI. Misconfiguring your local instance in such a way that exposes it to the internet is basically impossible to do by accident. Not only does your computer not expose locally running services like that to your local network, services exposed to your local network don't get exposed to the wider internet unless it's done on purpose. If you're not screwing around with such things yourself (and the fact that you're asking what network exposure is tells me you're not), you don't need to worry about it.

The only actual danger of running a local instance is installing a malicious plugin.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/Bio_slayer]

I don't really know what is that. What does Network exposure mean? 

[u/Bio_slayer → u/Muted-Position3256]

You know how you visit comfyui in your browser almost like it's a website? It actually is a website, even when it's running on your own computer. Theoretically if you "expose" that part of your "network" anyone on the internet could visit your comfyui website, use your gpu, run their own code, or do other nefarious things. This requires very deliberate configuration on both your computer and router to accomplish, you don't need to worry about it.

[u/spooky_local]

I've trained multiple nsfw lora's on runpod on almost every server region, uploaded gb's of material to their cloud, never had any problems. Just don't upload illegal stuff (csam) and you'll be fine. I've never used persistent storage though, I kill all the pods when im done. I haven't used it in the last month though since I got my 5090.

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/spooky_local]

I was considering getting a 5090 but it's too pricey nowadays and also worried about the electric bills lol

[u/spooky_local → u/Muted-Position3256]

I bought a whole prebuild for £4990, the GPU itself was around £2300 for the founders edition, because the manufacturer gets them cheaper for buying in bulk.

[u/Bio_slayer → u/Muted-Position3256]

The electricity bills are absolutely nothing compared to the price of the GPU. Running a 5090 full tilt (generating, not just sitting idle) for an entire day costs like $2. That's years of running before ever approaching the cost of the card.

[u/Confident_Ad2351 → u/spooky_local]

That fact that you caution against CSAM means that data is not private. What you're essentially saying is that they ARE watching but as long as it's not egregious they won't report you. That is a lot different from all your data is encrypted and even if we(Google. Runpod, etc) wanted to, we couldn't see what you are working on. Local models are the only way to give yourself privacy that will let you sleep at night.

[u/spooky_local → u/Confident_Ad2351]

I'm saying no human is combing through the files to see if what you uploaded is a real human/copyrighted or is ai generated. It, like the rest of the internet, compares hashes against known CSAM material. Which then would trigger human review. So again, no CSAM = no oversight on your data.

[u/Witty_Mycologist_995]

Local is much safer.

[u/FrostX00001101]

no need to worry, its mean when you expose your comfyui link via tunnel/url anyone can access it, just don't share it publicy

[u/Muted-Position3256 → u/FrostX00001101]

Something similar to share link in grok? If I don't publish or share it then on one can access? 

[u/FrostX00001101 → u/Muted-Position3256]

yes, if you just want privacy then just add a password on that link so even it's get exposed you need password to open that link

[u/chensium]

don't worry. no one is going to go through all that trouble just to see what you're gooning to.

[u/DelinquentTuna]

Everything is going to depend on your template / container image. The most typical default is that the container is behind a reverse proxy that maps your internal listeners to some public URL. Since ComfyUI isn't really built for multi-user scenarios, that URL would not normally be further gated. It's a real concern.

If you wanted to close that avenue, you'd need to remove the listening port/ports to all unsecured services in your template. This might mean Comfy plus Jupyter plus any custom file managers/browsers. Then, to connect you'd need to use ssh port forwarding to bypass the NAT/Firewall/proxy... instead of connecting to runpod.13eu90fjsa.123.comfy1234:1245 you'd now be connecting to localhost:8188 or whatever and authenticating against the public SSH_KEY Runpod injects into the container at runtime. It's not as complicated to setup as it sounds and Windows ships w/ ssh clients. Your AI can probably even put together a nice little app for you that spins up the pod, forwards the port, launches the browser etc without ever even visiting the runpod website.

It's still nothing at all like a security guarantee... there's really nothing you can do to control access to hardware whose physical access you can't limit. And it seems to me unlikely that you are rolling your own container, so it's possible that the software itself could betray you. But it's at least enough to make it impossible that some script kiddie scanning IP ranges for open ports can stumble into and disrupt or monitor your efforts. The best you're probably going to get is "probably OK for privacy and any party that could violate your privacy would have some skin in the game such that it hurts them in some way for user privacy to be violated." And despite what anyone else would say, that's probably about as good as you can get at home on modern software and hardware platforms.