What steps do you take to secure your server and your selfhosted services?

[invertedparallax@lemm.ee]

There are ip lists that let you iptables drop all traffic from China and Russia.

Strongly recommend.

[ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com]

I was auto banning all countries but my own but now I’m hosting one resource that has an audience including Chinese…

Good advice outside of this use case!

[kratoz29@lemm.ee]

I expose some stuff through IPv6 only with my Synology NAS (I am CGNATED) and I have always wondered if I still need to use fail2ban in that environment...

My Synology has an auto block feature that from my understanding is essentially fail2ban, what I don't know is if such a feature works for all my exposed services but Synology's.

[robador51@lemmy.ml]

I do this too. Took me a little effort to set things up, but now its so easy.

[ace@lemmy.ananace.dev]

Default block for incoming traffic is always a good starting point.
I'm personally using crowdsec to good results, but still need to add some more to it as I keep seeing failed attacks that should be blocked much quicker.

[mtk@lemmy.world]

Just tailscale really.

My services are only exposed to the tailscale network, so I don't have to worry about otger devices on my LAN.

A good VPN with MFA is all you really need if you are the only user.

[jimmy90@lemmy.world]

use a cheap vlan switch to make an actual vlan DMZ with the services' router

use non-root containers everywhere. segment services in different containers

[invertedparallax@lemm.ee]

Yeah, there were other countries to ban, but those 2 cut my attacks down 90%.

Also consider a honeypot that triggers when anyone tries to ssh it at all.

[mtk@lemmy.world]

in the context of the comment you referenced:

Definitely have the server on its own VLAN. It shouldn't have any access to other devices that are not related to the services and I would also add some sort of security software.

If you have a public service that you expect to have multiple users on you definitely should have some level of monitoring whether it is just the application logs from the forum that you want to host or further have some sort of EDR on the server.

Things I would do if I was hosting a public forum:

• Reverse proxy
• fail2ban
• dedicated server that does not have any personal data or other services that are sensitive
• complete network isolation with VLAN
• send application logs to ELK
• clamAV

And if the user base grows I would also add:

• EDR such as velociraptor
• an external firewall / ips
• possibly move from docker to VM for further isolation (not likely)

[relativearea1@sh.itjust.works]

Enable firewall and block all ports you're not using(most firewalls do this by default)

this one haven't failed me....yet.

PS: please don't pentest me

[lorentz@feddit.it]

My Synology has an auto block feature that from my understanding is essentially fail2ban, what I don’t know is if such a feature works for all my exposed services but Synology’s

I'd be surprised if it works for custom services. Fail2ban has to know what's running and haw to have access to its log file to know what is a failed authentication request. The best you can do without log access is to rate limit new tcp connections. But still you should know what's the service behind because 5 new SSH sessions per minute and IP can be reasonable 5 new http1.0 connections likely cannot load a single html page.

[justenoughducks@feddit.nl]

Dropping instead of blocking might technically be better because it wastes a bit more bot time and they see it as "it doesn't exist" rather than an obsticle to try exploits on. Not sure if that is true though.

For me:

• ssh server only with keys

• absolutely no ssh forwarding, only available to local network via firewall rules

• docker socket proxy for everything that needs socket access

• drop non-used ports, limit IPs for local-only services (e.g. paperless)

• crowdsec on traefik for the rest (sadly it blocks my VPN IPs also)

• Authelia over everything that doesn't break the native apps (jellyfin and home assistant are the two that it breaks so far, and HA was very intermittent so I made a separate authelia rule and mobile DNS entry for slightly reduced rules)

• proper umask rules on all docker directories (or as much as possible)

• main drive FDE with a separate boot drive with FDE keyfile on a dongle that is removed except for updates and booting to make snatch-and-grabs useless and compromising bootloader impractical

• full disk encryption with passworded data drives, so even if a smash and grab happens when I leave the dongle in, the sensitive data is still encrypted and the keys aren't in memory (makes a startup script with a password needed, so no automated startups for me)

For more info, I followed a lot of stuff on: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

[irmadlad@lemmy.world]

• Fail2ban
• UFW
• Reverse Proxy
• IPtraf (monitor)
• Lynis (Audit)
• OpenVas (Audit)
• Nessus (Audit)
• Non standard SSH port
• CrowdSec + Appsec
• No root logins
• SSH keys
• Tailscale
• RKHunter

[dannyboy@sh.itjust.works]

Tailscale and being at my house is the only two ways in so I feel those are pretty good for me.

[irmadlad@lemmy.world]

My new strategy is to block EVERY port

Wow! All 65535 +/-, in and out? That's one way to skin a cat.

[gamer@lemm.ee]

ez pz:

#!/usr/sbin/nft -f
table inet filter {
    chain input {
        type filter hook input priority raw; policy accept;
        iif "lo" accept
        ct state established,related accept
        iif "enp1s0" udp dport 51820 accept
        iif "enp1s0" drop
    }

    chain forward {
        type filter hook forward priority raw; policy accept;
        iif "lo" accept
        ct state established,related accept
        iif "enp1s0" udp dport 51820 accept
        iif "enp1s0" drop
    }

    chain output {
        type filter hook output priority raw; policy accept;
    }
}

[irmadlad@lemmy.world]

I've seen it done as such:

[hperrin@lemmy.ca]

One thing I do is instead of having an open SSH port, I have an OpenVPN server that I’ll connect to, then SSH to the host from within the network. Then, if someone hacks into the network, they still won’t have SSH access.

[splashjackson@lemmy.ca]

I put up a sign that says, "No hackers allowed plz"

[chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de]

I do the same, but with Wireguard instead of OpenVPN. The performance is much better in my experience and it sucks less battery life.