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?
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.
For lots of things I self host that I wanna expose, I’ll just open a random port like 6952 and then reverse proxy w/ nginx on my web server. Not sure how secure it is, but it works
Ports are probed and scanned constantly so a random port doesn’t make so much difference. I would use a strict firewall with the server IP whitelisted.
Can they see what you are hosting on that port, though? Like say I want to open ssh to my server from the internet (I don’t do this and I wouldn’t unless it was temporary), but I don’t want to open it on port 22 because that’s too obvious. Are there bots that just try every protocol until they find one that your server responds to? Or is there a way to dig up information on what is being exposed behind that port?
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.
@housepanther@effingjoe Unless you’re running a router/firewall on the edge that can act as a reverse proxy, you kind of need to port forward to a reverse proxy if you’re behind NAT.
You could use a VPS as a proxy and set up a VPN tunnel between the home server and the VPS to avoid port forwarding altogether. I do this for my mastodon and lemmy instances. My home server is of course behind NAT but there’s no need for any kind of port forwarding. I should know because I have none configured.
The only port I open is for wireguard. That way I can access all services on my LAN. Wireguard is also very secure and requires keys based authentication so is hard to brute. It also allows me to secure myself if I ever need to join WiFi or an untrusted network
For services that need to be public facing (Mastodon, Lemmy, Gitea…) I’m renting a VPS. Services that are only for personal use run on my home server and are only accessible through Wireguard, with the VPS acting as a “bridge” whenever I’m outside of my home network.
Unless you need to share/provide services for a public, then you shouldn’t be setting up reverse proxies or cloudflare tunnels in my opinion. All you need is WireGuard for you and the handful of users that might be using it.
I have two ports open for:
WireGuard
SSH Tunnel
Both of these services will only accept key based authentication.
WireGuard is the main way that my wife and me access the services away from home. When our phones disconnect from our home’s SSID, Tasker automatically connects to the WireGuard tunnel so we never lose access to services.
The SSH tunnel is just a fallback in case I get behind a firewall that might be doing DPI and blocking VPN traffic. The SSH tunnel operates on 443 to hopefully appear to be SSL traffic and allowed through. I’ve used it a very limited amount of times to get out from strict corporate firewalls.
I don’t know about your particular use case, but I’ve found that some apps experience problems when the IP address of a resource they’re using changes out from under them. Like either they experience temporary connectivity issues during the transition or even just stop being able to reach the resource until restarted. However if your setup is working for you, that’s great!
Yeah, I haven’t had any problems with it, what apps have been an issue for you?
The app that I use the most during that transitional period would be Ultrasonic which would be streaming music from the Airsonic service as I get in my vehicle and drive away or arrive back home. But even that flawlessly transitions without skipping a beat since it is set to cache songs.
The app that comes to mind as having problems with changing IPs is the Home Assistant app. It would simply lose connectivity when the IP changed and never do another DNS lookup to connect again… I always had to restart it. The “solution” for me was not to change IPs and just leave Wireguard on. It’s cool that Ultrasonic handles it though.
Interesting, yeah, maybe report it as an issue on github, I use a browser link to my dashboard for Home Assistant instead of the app so it hasn’t happened to me. I almost installed it the other day to get presence detection but decided on another way.
I’m confused why the IP address of a resource is changing for you when you’re moving in/out of the wireguard tunnel? In my setup the LAN IP addresses always stay the same whether I’m on the local network or accessing remotely, It’s just the route to them that changes (over a different ethernet adapter). Perhaps that’s what you meant, or there’s some crazy configs out there I’m unaware of.
I fully admit I may be doing this wrong. But in order to connect to a server over Wireguard I’m connecting to it over its Wireguard IP address. (And if I’m not connecting to it over Wireguard I don’t connect to it over a Wireguard IP address.) It’s relevant to note that I’m not using Wireguard as a traditional VPN where all traffic bound for the internet is tunneled over Wireguard. Instead, I’m using it strictly for point-to-point tunneling from a client to one of my servers. In other words, my default routes don’t go to Wireguard. Maybe that’s the difference here?
It’s more about gaining access from inside a network that doesn’t allow outbound on 22. For the web to work it would need 443 so connecting out on 443 might work
I think you may be still missing the point because it was never implied that the port change is for security; the security is in disabling password authentication and only accepting key based authentication. The reason I put it on 443 is because it is a port that is usually allowed by firewalls and doesn’t get as much attention. So if I am on a network that is blocking access for standard VPN or SSH ports then it might just be enough for me to bypass it. And it’s traffic on a port that is going to see a lot of other encrypted traffic going across it, so it looks more natural then just popping some other random ports that could potentially raise an alarm.
I’m not missing any point. It should be clear to people who don’t understand security that running a protocol on a different port doesn’t mean shit for safety. “Because it doesn’t get as much attention” wouldn’t mean anything to any enterprise firewall the moment it’s not an http header.
You are talking about security when that is not the purpose of it. So yes, you are off on a tangent and missing the point of it.
It should be clear to people who don’t understand security that running a protocol on a different port doesn’t mean shit for safety.
It is clear, it’s clear to everyone, so why did you randomly interject irrelevant information? Because you incorrectly assumed someone thought it had to do with security… but no one here thought it had anything to do with security. Everyone understood it but for you, and you were corrected not only by me but the other person.
Because it doesn’t get as much attention” wouldn’t mean anything to any enterprise firewall the moment it’s not an http header.
As I’ve said, I’ve used it a few times to escape firewalls… it works. Will it always work? No, I never made the claim this will bypass all firewalls… the strictest of firewalls will block it, but there are other ways around those firewalls. E.g. proxytunnel, stunnel4
Check out tail scale. It’s wire guard made easy. I expose http services to the public Internet, and have all my devices on the same network so I can access local services without exposing them to the public Internet.
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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.
I think many of us are using reverse proxies, and opening port 443 (https) and maybe port 80 (http).
Port forwarding can be a recipe for disaster. I’d much rather make use of reverse proxying.
For lots of things I self host that I wanna expose, I’ll just open a random port like 6952 and then reverse proxy w/ nginx on my web server. Not sure how secure it is, but it works
Ports are probed and scanned constantly so a random port doesn’t make so much difference. I would use a strict firewall with the server IP whitelisted.
Can they see what you are hosting on that port, though? Like say I want to open ssh to my server from the internet (I don’t do this and I wouldn’t unless it was temporary), but I don’t want to open it on port 22 because that’s too obvious. Are there bots that just try every protocol until they find one that your server responds to? Or is there a way to dig up information on what is being exposed behind that port?
nmap will try. https://nmap.org/book/man-version-detection.html
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.
That’s security through obscurity and one should never rely on this strategy alone
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.
I forward 443 to my reverse proxy.
@housepanther @effingjoe Unless you’re running a router/firewall on the edge that can act as a reverse proxy, you kind of need to port forward to a reverse proxy if you’re behind NAT.
You could use a VPS as a proxy and set up a VPN tunnel between the home server and the VPS to avoid port forwarding altogether. I do this for my mastodon and lemmy instances. My home server is of course behind NAT but there’s no need for any kind of port forwarding. I should know because I have none configured.
At that point why don’t you just run it in the vps and save the hop.
No, all of services are reverse-proxied through a WireGuard tunnel connected to my cloud VPS.
ipv6 and reverse proxied. yes.
HTTPS and VPN (Wireguard) ports
I have one for OpenVPN and that’s it.
The only port I open is for wireguard. That way I can access all services on my LAN. Wireguard is also very secure and requires keys based authentication so is hard to brute. It also allows me to secure myself if I ever need to join WiFi or an untrusted network
Port 443 through Traefik and a port for Plex.
This is the way I do it. Id like to run plex through traefik as well but it gets angry.
32400
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.
ssh to a few specific ip ranges, WireGuard to the world on a port I randomly picked
Openvpn to connect to the network, 80 and 443 for static websites, that’s it.
Email gets delivered by a VPS via a different port, ssh acces via vps as well. No initial connections from an ip not from the my country as well.
For services that need to be public facing (Mastodon, Lemmy, Gitea…) I’m renting a VPS. Services that are only for personal use run on my home server and are only accessible through Wireguard, with the VPS acting as a “bridge” whenever I’m outside of my home network.
Unless you need to share/provide services for a public, then you shouldn’t be setting up reverse proxies or cloudflare tunnels in my opinion. All you need is WireGuard for you and the handful of users that might be using it.
I have two ports open for:
WireGuard
SSH Tunnel
Both of these services will only accept key based authentication.
WireGuard is the main way that my wife and me access the services away from home. When our phones disconnect from our home’s SSID, Tasker automatically connects to the WireGuard tunnel so we never lose access to services.
The SSH tunnel is just a fallback in case I get behind a firewall that might be doing DPI and blocking VPN traffic. The SSH tunnel operates on 443 to hopefully appear to be SSL traffic and allowed through. I’ve used it a very limited amount of times to get out from strict corporate firewalls.
Why not use Wireguard from your phones all the time, even at home? Just performance?
It would be extra overhead for no reason. Why keep it on when Tasker automates it?
I don’t know about your particular use case, but I’ve found that some apps experience problems when the IP address of a resource they’re using changes out from under them. Like either they experience temporary connectivity issues during the transition or even just stop being able to reach the resource until restarted. However if your setup is working for you, that’s great!
Yeah, I haven’t had any problems with it, what apps have been an issue for you?
The app that I use the most during that transitional period would be Ultrasonic which would be streaming music from the Airsonic service as I get in my vehicle and drive away or arrive back home. But even that flawlessly transitions without skipping a beat since it is set to cache songs.
The app that comes to mind as having problems with changing IPs is the Home Assistant app. It would simply lose connectivity when the IP changed and never do another DNS lookup to connect again… I always had to restart it. The “solution” for me was not to change IPs and just leave Wireguard on. It’s cool that Ultrasonic handles it though.
Interesting, yeah, maybe report it as an issue on github, I use a browser link to my dashboard for Home Assistant instead of the app so it hasn’t happened to me. I almost installed it the other day to get presence detection but decided on another way.
Good idea!
I’m confused why the IP address of a resource is changing for you when you’re moving in/out of the wireguard tunnel? In my setup the LAN IP addresses always stay the same whether I’m on the local network or accessing remotely, It’s just the route to them that changes (over a different ethernet adapter). Perhaps that’s what you meant, or there’s some crazy configs out there I’m unaware of.
I fully admit I may be doing this wrong. But in order to connect to a server over Wireguard I’m connecting to it over its Wireguard IP address. (And if I’m not connecting to it over Wireguard I don’t connect to it over a Wireguard IP address.) It’s relevant to note that I’m not using Wireguard as a traditional VPN where all traffic bound for the internet is tunneled over Wireguard. Instead, I’m using it strictly for point-to-point tunneling from a client to one of my servers. In other words, my default routes don’t go to Wireguard. Maybe that’s the difference here?
I was able to reduce that to just SSH by having my Wireguard host on a VPS and connecting out from home. Running SSH on 443 is a neat idea.
Running ssh on 443 doesn’t do anything unfortunately. A proper port scan will still detect such a common protocol.
It’s more about gaining access from inside a network that doesn’t allow outbound on 22. For the web to work it would need 443 so connecting out on 443 might work
Sure, just don’t mistake port switching for actual security.
I think you may be still missing the point because it was never implied that the port change is for security; the security is in disabling password authentication and only accepting key based authentication. The reason I put it on 443 is because it is a port that is usually allowed by firewalls and doesn’t get as much attention. So if I am on a network that is blocking access for standard VPN or SSH ports then it might just be enough for me to bypass it. And it’s traffic on a port that is going to see a lot of other encrypted traffic going across it, so it looks more natural then just popping some other random ports that could potentially raise an alarm.
I’m not missing any point. It should be clear to people who don’t understand security that running a protocol on a different port doesn’t mean shit for safety. “Because it doesn’t get as much attention” wouldn’t mean anything to any enterprise firewall the moment it’s not an http header.
You are talking about security when that is not the purpose of it. So yes, you are off on a tangent and missing the point of it.
It is clear, it’s clear to everyone, so why did you randomly interject irrelevant information? Because you incorrectly assumed someone thought it had to do with security… but no one here thought it had anything to do with security. Everyone understood it but for you, and you were corrected not only by me but the other person.
As I’ve said, I’ve used it a few times to escape firewalls… it works. Will it always work? No, I never made the claim this will bypass all firewalls… the strictest of firewalls will block it, but there are other ways around those firewalls. E.g. proxytunnel, stunnel4
Absolutely. Though putting it on 443, which is regularly port scanned as well, is the opposite of security through obscurity.
Check out tail scale. It’s wire guard made easy. I expose http services to the public Internet, and have all my devices on the same network so I can access local services without exposing them to the public Internet.