this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Maybe I'm using the wrong terms, but what I'm wondering is if people are running services at home that they've made accessible from the internet. I.e. not open to the public, only so that they can use their own services from anywhere.

I'm paranoid a f when it comes to our home server, and even as a fairly experienced Linux user and programmer I don't trust myself when it comes to computer security. However, it would be very convenient if my wife and I could access our self-hosted services when away from home. Or perhaps even make an album public and share a link with a few friends (e.g. Nextcloud, but I haven't set that up yet).

Currently all our services run in docker containers, with separate user accounts, but I wouldn't trust that to be 100% safe. Is there some kind of idiot proof way to expose one of the services to the internet without risking the integrity of the whole server in case it somehow gets compromised?

How are the rest of you reasoning about security? Renting a VPS for anything exposed? Using some kind of VPN to connect your phones to home network? Would you trust something like Nextcloud over HTTPS to never get hacked?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'll put a recommendation out for if you're going to open ports: use abnormal ports. Someone is likely to try to hit your port 22 for ssh, but not your port 49231.

Edit: It's definitely some security by obscurity. Still use a strong password or keys.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't technically open any ports to the public. I have a site-to-site wireguard tunnel to a hosted server. The hosted server is running a hypervisor with two virtual switches. One switch is my external switch and only my Wireguard server is using it. The other is an internal switch where I place other VMs for separate things. A container host, a terminal server with xrdp, a monitoring server with netdata, stuff like that. All technically, but unnecessarily, accessed through nginx proxy manager.

Because it's site2site with my home equipment on the Wireguard server, i can still connect to my home network where i host a number of separate services like HomeAssistant from outside the home network.

I don't use tailscale, but Wireguard vanilla is super easy to work with. I also have fail2ban pretty much everywhere I can install it because it takes up practically zero resources.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

None. If anything, I'd probably set up a VPN. But there's nothing so deathly important on my home network that I would need it while away from home. If I wanted to expose services, I'd use a reverse proxy and increase separation between services.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

80, 443 for HTTP/S, and 587 for a VPN service. Reason being that I travel frequently, and often have to connect through a bunch of different networks, Airport WiFi, mobile roaming, hotel WiFi, etc. and you never know the kinds of network restrictions they impose on their pipes.

80 and 443 is least likely to be dropped, while 587 is a common SMTP port that could make it through most networks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

ipv6 and reverse proxied. yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I run a few services that require ports to be open. Everything that can go behind a reverse proxy does so. But there's some that can't and that's OK.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I use Remote Desktop, BitTorrent, and play games, so I need some things open for that. I used to be super paranoid about hackers and viruses and shit like that, but it's not like those things are looking for regular, everyday users and even if they did get in my system, I don't keep anything important on my computer so I can just wipe it all out and reinstall everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd if I could, but CGNAT.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This year I started using DynDNS with only my IPv6 address since IPv4 is behind CGNAT and it actually works quite well nowadays

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do you mean works? Like you could access from everywhere some services like Plex or Nextcloud?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yes just like with a static IPv4

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, I'm not sure of how exactly this works, but I'm gonna check it out since I have IPv6 addresses.

Just to be clear, even from IPv4 only can access my exposed services?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you expose ports on IPv4 or IPv6 (port forwarding) anyone can access the service behind these ports if they know your address but so do you too

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago
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