I’m looking for some insights to confirm if my home server’s security is up to par against common cyber threats. Here’s a brief rundown of my setup:
External Ports: I’ve limited external access to only three ports:
Port 80 and 443 for Nginx-Proxy-Manager
Port 51829 for Wireguard VPN
Hardware:
I’m running a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Mini PC.
Both are connected to the router via Ethernet.
Network:
NPM is set up for reverse proxy.
SSL is enabled for local DNS - to avoid memorizing IP addresses.
Docker:
All applications are containerized and use network_mode: bridge.
Internet-Facing Services:
Only two services are exposed to the internet:
A media server
The Wireguard VPN
I’m using free DuckDNS domains, configured with NPM.
Firewall:
Currently, I’m relying on the default settings of Debian 12 and the Docker engine.
I haven’t set up any specific firewall rules.
Given this setup, do you think my security measures are sufficient? I’m particularly curious about the risks associated with my Docker containers and the exposed ports. Any recommendations or best practices you could share would be greatly appreciated!
Exposed parts can be messy if you’re not used to them.
Easiest option would be to have a VPS set up as a VPN server with the ports you need forwarded to it, and your applications connecting to it. If you don’t want the extra maintenance, Cloudflare tunnels for you. Racknerd boxes are $1/month.
Docker containers run as root by default. Either change the flag or switch to podman if you don’t need root access for your containers.
Time to get a router compatible with OpenWRT/OPNsense.
There probably are better ways, but I’m totoo at the moment to recollect.
Seems like your edge server is acting as a proxy for a media server on some other host on your LAN.
You want to make sure that the media server software is setup securely, patched, and properly isolated from anything else in LAN should that become compromised. Proxy closes off a lot of attack vectors but not application vulnerabilities. The Lastpass hack happened because of some vulnerability in an employees home plex server.
Setup automatic security updates with unattended-upgrades. I don’t know alot about your security expect for the fact that outdated applications are more vulnerable.
Put your external facing services behind the VPN, or at least put them in a separate VLAN that’s firewalled in such a way that they can’t reach the rest of the network if they become compromised.
Just in case, if you have jellyfin facing the web, jellyfin is not very secure, it has some vunurabilities unpatched for like forever
I personally would recommend hiding it behind the VPN, and making it available to everyone at home
Or as minimum or a good practice create locations in nginx to block for example logins outside of the VPN or house
So to login you need to be at home.or connected to the VPN (useful if you have other people using your services, so they they they can login at home, but continue using everything outside)
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Exposed parts can be messy if you’re not used to them.
Easiest option would be to have a VPS set up as a VPN server with the ports you need forwarded to it, and your applications connecting to it. If you don’t want the extra maintenance, Cloudflare tunnels for you. Racknerd boxes are $1/month.
Docker containers run as root by default. Either change the flag or switch to podman if you don’t need root access for your containers.
Time to get a router compatible with OpenWRT/OPNsense.
There probably are better ways, but I’m totoo at the moment to recollect.
What does the NGINX proxy manager do? Is that to access the mediaserver?
Seems like your edge server is acting as a proxy for a media server on some other host on your LAN.
You want to make sure that the media server software is setup securely, patched, and properly isolated from anything else in LAN should that become compromised. Proxy closes off a lot of attack vectors but not application vulnerabilities. The Lastpass hack happened because of some vulnerability in an employees home plex server.
Setup automatic security updates with unattended-upgrades. I don’t know alot about your security expect for the fact that outdated applications are more vulnerable.
Put your external facing services behind the VPN, or at least put them in a separate VLAN that’s firewalled in such a way that they can’t reach the rest of the network if they become compromised.
Can you give me some pointers on how to get started on accomplishing this? Maybe some app names or tutorials?
runtipi.io
Just in case, if you have jellyfin facing the web, jellyfin is not very secure, it has some vunurabilities unpatched for like forever I personally would recommend hiding it behind the VPN, and making it available to everyone at home Or as minimum or a good practice create locations in nginx to block for example logins outside of the VPN or house So to login you need to be at home.or connected to the VPN (useful if you have other people using your services, so they they they can login at home, but continue using everything outside)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
[Thread #316 for this sub, first seen 30th Nov 2023, 20:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Fail2ban is useful to set up.