DDos attack attempts on my NVR

[Ayhan]

Hi
I have an Asus router with AI protection and Two Way Intruction prevention system to prevent DDos attacks.
I was looking through my router settings and noticed many External Attacks that were blocked.
The source IP addresses are from random places, Tunisia, Greenwich, etc. and are targeting my NVR IP and one of my cameras.

Some alerts include:

WEB Masscan Scanner Activity
WEB Apache Struts Dynamic Method Invocation Remote Code Execution -1.a
WEB Apache Struts Dynamic Method Invocation Remote Code Execution -1.a
WEB Remote Command Execution via Shell Script -1.a
WEB Dahua IPCam Credentials Leak -1 (CVE-2017-6341)

What are these attack attempts and who could be doing this? a local neighbour with access to my network?
I have forwarded the web and server ports so i can access the NVR remotely via webpage and my app.
Is this the reason my NVR can be seen?
I read somewhere that vpn is more secure than port forwarding, is there a guide here on how to set this up and connect and is this method instead of opening ports?

Thanks

 

[Mal]

Hi,
I have no idea about why someone would be interested to attack your address. Instead, some thoughts about your setup. I have also AI protection capable Asus router but have strictly avoided activating the service because like many others I feel its operating principle of sending samples of traffic to cloud for analysis is not desirable. You could consider closing all ports and instead setting up the very nice OpenVPN server in your router (or using a the simpler but less safe PPTP VPN server). There are many OpenVPN clients like OpenVPN Connect for mobile and Tunnelblick for OS X. It takes some experimenting while getting all pieces aligned but after that it works like a charm. I have used it also for safe browsing from open public networks.
(It is another story that Asus router can become overloaded while handling the IP video traffic between several cameras and NVR. I am currently experimenting a setup where most of this traffic goes via switches and does not reach the router)

Setting Up And Using OpenVPN On ASUS Routers - SmallNetBuilder - Results from #1
[VPN] How to set up the ASUSWRT for VPN Server – OpenVPN | Official Support | ASUS Global
[VPN] How to set up the ASUSWRT for VPN server – PPTP | Official Support | ASUS Global

 

[Ayhan]

Thanks Mal
Will look into that.
Meanwhile found this > Two-Way IPS: Exploit Remote Command Execution, Netcore Router Backdoor Access

Looks like there are bots out there always scanning ip4 addresses.
Im going to change my forwarded port to something else which may help.