Is it practically impossible for a newcomer selfhost without using centralised services, and get DDOSed or hacked?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Maroon@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.

As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.

I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).

Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is nonsense. A small static website is not going to be hacked or DDOSd. You can run it off a cheap ARM single board computer on your desk, no problem at all.

source
- BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What?
  
  I’ve popped up a web server and within a day had so many hits on the router (thousands per minute) that performance tanked.
  
  Yea, no, any exposed service will get hammered. Frankly I’m surprised that machine I setup didn’t get hacked.
  
  source
  - poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Don’t leave SSH on port 22 open as there are a lot of crawlers for that, otherwise I really can’t say I share your experience, and I have been self-hosting for years.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Count042@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve been self-hosting a bunch of stuff for over a decade now, and have not had that issue.
    
    Except for a matrix server with open registration for a community that others not in the community started to use.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Oisteink@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Lol
    
    source
  - Omgboom@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You left stuff exposed is the only explanation. I’ve had services running for years without a problem
    
    source
  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What class of IP was it?
    
    source
  - MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I can’t say I’ve seen anything like that on the webservers I’ve exposed to the internet. But it could vary based on the IP you have if it’s a target for something already I suppose.
    
    source
hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
One aspect is how interesting you are as a target. What would a possible attacker gain by getting access to your services or hosts?

The danger to get hacked, is there but you are not Microsoft, amazon or PayPal. Expect login attempts and port scans from actors who map out the internets. But I doubt someone would spend much effort to break into your hosts if you do not make it easy.

DDOS protection isn’t something a tiny self hosted instance would need (at least in my experience).

Firewall your hosts, maybe use a reverse proxy and only expose the necessary services. Use secure passwords (different for each service), add fail2ban or the like if you’re paranoid. Maybe look into MFA. Use a DMZ (yes, VLANs could be involved here). Keep your software updated so that exploits don’t work. Have backups if something breaks or gets broken.

In my experience the biggest danger to my services is my laziness. It takes steady low level effort to keep the instances updated and running. (Yes there are automated update mechanisms - unattended upgrades i.e. -, but also downwards compatibility breaking changes in the software which will require manual interactions by me.)

source
- thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  +1 for the main risk to my service reliability being me getting distracted by some other shiny thing and getting behind on maintenance.
  
  source
  - TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m in this comment.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- dogsnest@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  …maybe use a reverse proxy…
  
  +1 post.
  
  I would suggest definitely reverse proxy. Caddy should be trivial in this use case.
  
  cheers,
  
  source
  - atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Reverse proxies don’t add security.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- Oisteink@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  All reverse proxies i have used do rudimentary DDoS protection: rate limiting. Enough to keep your local script kiddy at bay - but not advanced stuff.
  
  You can protect your ssh instance with rate limiting too but you’ll likely do this in the firewall and not the proxy.
  
  source
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Drink less paranoia smoothie…

I’ve been self-hosting for almost a decade now; never bothered with any of the giants. Just a domain pointed at me, and an open port or two. Never had an issue.

Don’t expose anything you don’t share with others; monitor the things you do expose with tools like fail2ban. VPN into the LAN for access to everything else.

source
traches@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Use any old computer you have lying around as a server. Use Tailscale to connect to it, and don’t open any ports in your home firewall. Congrats, you’re self-hosting and your risk is minimal.

source
- OpossumOnKeyboard@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exactly what I do and works like a dream. Had a VPS and nginx to proxy domain to it but got rid of it because I really had no use for it, the Tailscale method worked so well.
  
  source
  - rottedmood@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve been thinking of trying this (or using Caddy instead of nginx) so I could get Nextcloud running on an internal server but still have an external entry point (spousal approval) but after setting up the subdomain and then starting caddy and watching how many times that subdomain started to get scanned from various Ips all over the world, I figured eh that’s not a good plan. And I’m a nobody and don’t promote my domain anywhere.
    
    source
MagicShel@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As a newbie, DDoS and hacking are like taxes. You should be so lucky as to have to worry about them, because that means you’re wildly successful. Worry about getting there first because that’s the hard part.

source
- qaz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You don’t have to be successful to get hit by bots scanning for known vulnerabilities in common software (e.g. Wordpress), but most of those problems can be avoided by keeping everything up to date.
  
  source
  - MagicShel@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well he specified static website, which rules out WP, but yes. If your host accepts posts (in the generic sense, not necessarily specifically the http verb POST) that raises tons of other questions, that frankly were already well addressed when I made my post.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The DDOSED hype on this site is so over played. Oh my god my little self hosted services are going to get attacked. Is it technically possible yes but it hasn’t been my experience.

source
- markstos@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  DDoSing cost the attacker some time and resources so there has to something in it for them.
  
  Random servers on the internet are subject to lots of drive-by vuln scans and brute force login attempts, but not DDoS, which are most costly to execute.
  
  source
- tills13@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  99% of people think they are more important than they are.
  
  If you THINK you might be the victim of an attack like this, you’re not going to be a victim of an attack like this. If you KNOW you’ll be the victim of an attack like this on the other hand…
  
  source
  - gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Many of us also lived through the era where any 13 year old could steal Mommy’s credit card and rent a botnet for that ezpz
    
    My MC server a decade ago was tiny and it still happened every few months when we banned some butthurt kid
    
    source
JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
DDOS against a little self hosted instance isn’t really a concern I’d have. I’d be more concerned with the scraping of private information, ransomware, password compromises, things of that nature. If you keep your edge devices on the latest security patches and you are cognizant on what you are exposing and how, you’ll be fine.

source
Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A VPS with fail2ban is all you need really. Oh and don’t make ssh accounts where the username is the password. That’s what I did once, but the hackers were nice, they closed the hole and then just used it to run a irc client because the network and host was so stable.

Found out by accident, too bad they left their irc username and pw in cleartext. Was a fun week or so messing around with their channels

source
- fluckx@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Talk about a reverse UNO card.
  
  source
Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I feel like you have the wrong idea if what hacking acting a actually is… But yes, as long as you don’t do anything too stupid line forwarding all of your ports or going without any sort of firewall, the chances of your getting hacked are very low…

As for DDOSing, you can get DDOSed with or without self hosting all the same, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

source
- Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exactly piss off a script kiddie and get ddosed weather your self hosting or not.
  
  source
GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why would anyone ddos you? Ddos costs money andor effort. Noone is going to waste that on you. Maybe dos but not ddos. And the troll will go away after some time as well. There’s no gain in dosing you. Why would anyone hack your static website? For the lulz? If everything is https encrypted on your local net how does a hacker infest everything on your network?

source
- BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  DDOS can happen just from a script hammering on an exposed port trying to brute force credentials.
  
  source
  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Then block them there are tools that restrict abuse
    
    source
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Getting DDOSed or hacked is very very rare for anyone self hosting.

But it’s good to take some basic steps like an isolated VLAN as you’ve mentioned already, but also don’t expose services unless you need to. Immich for example if it’s just you using it will work just fine without being exposed to the internet.

source
HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can. I am lucky enough to not have been hacked after about a year of this, and I use a server in the living room. There are plenty of guides online for securing a server. Use common sense, and also look up threat modeling. You can also start hosting things locally and only host to the interwebs once you learn a little more. Basically, the idea that you need cloudflare and aws to not get hacked is because of misleading marketing.

source
- Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Man if your lucky enough after a year I must be super duper lucky with well over a decade.
  
  source
Apollo2323@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hey no to be harsh or anything but did you actually made your research? Plenty of people self host websites on their house without AWS , Google or Cloudfare and it works fine.

source
Confused_Emus@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I host a handful of Internet facing sites/applications from my NAS and have had no issues. Just make sure you know how to configure your firewall correctly and you’ll be fine.

source
just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Firewall, Auth on all services, diligent monitoring, network segmentation (vlans are fine), and don’t leave any open communications ports, and you’ll be fine.

Further steps would be intrusion detecting/banning like crowdsec for whatever apps leave world accessible. Maybe think about running a BSD host and using jails.

source
- ryannathans@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Freebsd here with jails, very smooth running and low maintenance. Can’t recommend it enough
  
  source
  - s38b35M5@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Love jails. My server didn’t move with me to Central America, and I miss Free/TrueNAS jails
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
qaz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Setup a VPN to your home network

Done
source
- Catsrules@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Public services require a little more work, you will need to rely on a service from a company, either a tunnel (e.g. Tailscale funnel) or a VPS.
  
  I have been hosting random public seerver for years publicly
  
  source
- ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  mmm netbird seems cool, any experience with it?
  
  source
  - qaz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, I’m currently using Tailscale but have been considering switching to Netbird to not be reliant on Tailscale.
    
    source
vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s very possible. If you carefully manage your attack surface and update your software regularly, you can mitigate your security risks quite a bit.

The main problem is going to be email. I have found no reliable way to send email that does not start with “have someone else do it for you” or “obtain an IP block delegation”.

source
- cron@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  email isn’t that hard when you have a static IP, either from your network provider or via a VPS. Then, setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC and you’re good to go (at least for simple use cases like notifications. When you want to send out thousands of emails, you might need more.)
  
  source
kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you are afraid of being ddosed which is very unlikely. Cloudflare has free ddos protection. You can put some but not all things behind their proxy.

Also instead of making things publicly available look in yo using a VPN. Wireguard with “wireguard easy” makes this very simple.

VLANs do not make you network magically more secure. But when setup correctly can increase security a load if something has already penetrated the network. But also just to streamline a network and allow or deny some parts of the network.

source
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have servers on Digital Ocean and Linode and also one in my basement, and have had no problem. I do have all services behind NPM (not to suggest it’s a panacea) and use HTTPS for everything. (not to suggest HTTPS is either) My use case could be different than yours - my immediate family are my only consumers - but have been running the same services in those locations for a few years now without issue.

source
filister@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you are CGNAT and use some tunnel (Wireguard, Tailscale, etc.) to access your services which are running on Docker containers, the attack vector is almost not existing.

source
___@l.djw.li ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If your needs are fairly low on the processing side, you can snag a cloud VPS on LowEndBox for five or six dollars a month. Quality is highly variable ofc, but I’m reasonably my happy with mine.

No AWS, etc (though I don’t know offhand where the actual box lives), SSH access defaults to a key, and the rest (firewall, reverse proxy if you like, and all the other best practices) are but an apt-get away and a quick searxng to find and dissect working configs.

Incidentally, searxng is a good place to start- dead easy to get rolling,and a big step towards degoogling your life. Stand it up, throw a pretty standard config at nginx, and do a certbot —nginx -d search.mydomain.com - that all there is to it.

YMMV with more complex apps,but there is plenty of help to be had.

Oh…. Decide early on if anonymity is a goal,or you’re ok tying real life identity to your server if someone cares to look. Register domains and make public facing choices accordingly.

Either choice is acceptable if it’s the right one for you, but it’s hard to change once you pick a path.

I’m a big fan of not hosting on prem simply because it’s one more set of cables to trip over, etc. But for a latte a month in hosting costs, it’s worth it to me.

source
ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Use a firewall like OPNsense and you’ll be fine. There’s a Crowdsec plugin to help against malicious actors, and for the most part, nothing you’re doing is worth the trouble to them.

source
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Other than the low chance of you being targeted I would say only expose your services through something like Wireguard. Other than the port being open attackers won’t know what it’s for. Wireguard doesn’t respond if you don’t immediately authenticate.

source
Lifebandit666@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve self hosted home assistant for a few years, external access through Cloud flare now because it’s been so stablez but previously used DuckDNS which was a bit shit if I’m honest.

I got into self hosting proper earlier this year, I wanted to make something that I could sail the 7 seas with.

I use Tailscale for everything.

The only open port on my router is for Plex because I’m a socialist and like to share my work with my friends.

Just keep it all local and use it at home. If you wanna take some of your media outside with you, download it onto your phone before you leave

source
deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Of course security comes with layers, and if you’re not comfortable hosting services publically, use a VPN.

However, 3 simple rules go a long way:

Treat any machine or service on a local network as if they were publically accesible. That will prevent you from accidentally leaving the auth off, or leaving the weak/default passwords in place.

Install services in a way that they are easy to patch. For example, prefer phpmyadmin from debian repo instead of just copy pasting the latest official release in the www folder. If you absolutely need the latest release, try a container maintained by a reasonable adult. (No offense to the handful of kids I’ve known providing a solid code, knowledge and bugreports for the general public!)

Use unattended-upgrades, or an alternative auto update mechanism on rhel based distros, if you don’t want to become a fulltime sysadmin. The increased security is absolutely worth the very occasional breakage.

You and your hardware are your worst enemies. There are tons of giudes on what a proper backup should look like, but don’t let that discourage you. Some backup is always better than NO backup. Even if it’s just a copy of critical files on an external usb drive. You can always go crazy later, and use snapshotting abilities of your filesystem (btrfs, zfs), build a separate backupserver, move it to a different physical location… sky really is the limit here.
source
Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If your SSH is using key authentication and you don’t have anything silly as an attack vector, you should be grand.

source
- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  People who ho get compromised are the ones who expose a password authentication service with a short memorable password
  
  source
bizdelnick@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It is easy to get hacked if you make stupid mistakes. Just don’t make them.

source
- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is honestly true. Just follow good security practices
  
  source
  - 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Is this some sort of insider I am not aware of? I always see these kind of replies and I never understand them. Why even write anything if you don’t have anything meaningful to add to the conversation? This is a genuine question to both of you. I mean, yes, it might be true that everything is fine and dandy if you follow good security practices? But how does that help a beginner? Its like saying driving a car with manual transmission is easy. You just need to know the numbers from 1 to 6 and that a higher number makes the car go faster. Even though this might be technically true, it doesn’t help anybody.
    
    source
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you do it right you shouldn’t get hacked. Even if you do you can keep good immutable backups so you can restore. Also make sure you monitor everything for bad behavior or red flags.

source
Valon_Blue@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve been self hosting for 2 or 3 years and haven’t been hacked, though I fully expect it to happen eventually(especially if I start posting my blog in places). I’d suggest self hosting a VPN to get into your home network and not making your apps accessible via the internet unless 100% necessary. I also use docker containers to minimize the apps access to my full system. Best of luck!

source
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It depends on what your level of confidence and paranoia is. Things on the Internet get scanned constantly, I actually get routine reports from one of them that I noticed in the logs and hit them up via an associated website. Just take it as an expected that someone out there is going to try and see if admin/password gets into some login screen if it’s facing the web.

For the most part, so long as you keep things updated and use reputable and maintained software for your system the larger risk is going to come from someone clicking a link in the wrong email than from someone haxxoring in from the public internet.

source

-> View More Comments