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)?
Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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.
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.
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.
Am I missing something? Why would anyone leave SSH open outside the internal network?
All of my services have SSH disabled unless I need to do something, and then I only do it locally, and disable as soon as I’m done.
Note that I don’t have a VPS anywhere.
How do you reach into your server with SSH disabled without lugging a monitor and keyboard around?
My firewall, server, NAS and all my services have web GUIs. If I need SSH access all I have to do is enable it via web GUI, do what I need to, disable again.
If push comes to shove, I do have a portable monitor and a keyboard in storage if needed, but have not had the need to use them yet.
Some people want to be able to reach their server via SSH when they are not at home, but yes I agree in general that is not necessary when running a real home server.
Yeah, I guess I’ve never needed to do that. That may change as I’m thinking of moving all my services from UnRaid to ProxMox to leave UnRaid for storage only.
I guess that’ll bring me back here soon enough.
You left stuff exposed is the only explanation. I’ve had services running for years without a problem
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.
Yes my biggest mistake was leaving a vps dns server wide open. It took months for it to get abused though.
What class of IP was it?
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.
Frankly I’m surprised that machine I setup didn’t get hacked.
How could it if all you had was a basic webserver running?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You don’t have to be successful to get hit by bots scanning for known vulnerabilities in common software (e.g. Wordpress), but OP won’t have to worry about that if they keep everything up to date. However, this is also necessary when renting a VPN from said centralised services.
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.
A static website and Immich
he specified static website, which rules out WP
Oops missed that
EDIT: And I missed Immich too
Getting DDOSed or hacked is very very rare for anyone self hosting. DDOS doesn’t really happen to random people hosting a few small services, and hacking is also rare because it requires that you expose something with a significant enough vulnerability that someone has a way into the application and potentially the server behind it.
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.
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
Talk about a reverse UNO card.
I feel like you have the wrong idea of 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 you 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.
Exactly piss off a script kiddie and get ddosed weather your self hosting or not.
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.
Man if your lucky enough after a year I must be super duper lucky with well over a decade.
Self hosting can save a lot of money compared to Google or aws. Also, self hosting doesn’t make you vulnerable to DDOS, you can be DDOSed even without a home server.
You don’t need VLANs to keep your network secure, but you should make sure than any self hosted service isn’t unnecessarily opens up tot he internet, and make sure that all your services are up to date.
What services are you planning to run? I could help suggest a threat model and security policy.
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.
You can simply set up a VPN for your home network (e.g. Tailscale, Netbird, Headscale, etc.) and you won’t have to worry about attacks. 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.
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 services for years publicly and it hasn’t been an issue.
Edit, I might have miss understood the definition of public. I have hosted stuff publicly, however everything was protected by a login screen. So it wasn’t something a random person could make use of.
mmm netbird seems cool, any experience with it?
No, I’m currently using Tailscale but have been considering switching to Netbird to not be reliant on Tailscale.
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.
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:
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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.
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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!)
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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.
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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.
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