Are you exposing any ports on your home server? - eviltoast

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?

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ever since I moved to a ridiculously high port I haven’t had any access attempts on my server. 6952 won’t do shit, but if you’re between 40000 and 65000 you probably won’t get anything.

    • Retiring@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      That’s security through obscurity and one should never rely on this strategy alone

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If it’s your only form of security then it’s bad. But if it’s on combination with other measures then it’s a good thing.

        I wouldn’t let anyone who hits my ip/port directly into my openvpn. But not having china and russia bomboarding me with requests is nice.