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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Are you exposing any ports on your home server? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 1 year ago by fhein to c/selfhosted

85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] ulemmyagain 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I only have my (non default) ssh port exposed. I just use an ssh tunnel to access all my services. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but it works for me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Security through obfuscation is never a good idea. Best practices for exposing ssh (iirc):

disable root login (or at least over ssh)
disable password login over ssh, use key pairs instead
use fail2ban to prevent brute forcing
install security updates frequently

All of those are pretty easy to do, and after that you're in a really good place.

I don't see a problem with ssh tunneling to access services, as long as the ssh server is secured correctly

[–] ulemmyagain 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I should install fail2ban. I already have everything else covered. I've only heard of fail2ban, not very familiar with it. Is it necessary if password login is disabled? Can you brute force ssh keys? I really appreciate your advice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I definitely recommend you do your own research into this. Brute forcing ssh keys should be practically impossible. Is it necessary to install fail2ban with password login disabled? Not sure, I'm of the opinion that it won't hurt, just one more line of defense. It's pretty easy to setup.

[–] ulemmyagain 1 points 1 year ago

Cool, thanks so much!