Hi there, I’ve been reading up on selfhosting for a couple of weeks now and I got my feet wet with a couple of things.

However, before really getting serious with it, I feel I need to get down the basics and make sure that my server will not end up a security hazard. My final goal would be to self-host my socials (Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix) - just for myself.

What basic security do I need to have in place, considering these services? I’ll be running this on a VPS and so far I consider the following: disable password login (login with ssh key only) then set up nginx, fail2ban, and a basic firewall. I’d try to close all ports that are not required for the services I run. I’ll also change ssh port from 22 to something else and close port 22 as well.

Would this be a sufficient basis, or am I missing something crucial?

Bonus question: do you know of good tutorials to learn the above stuff? I’ve been following the guides on DigitalOcean (e.g. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-protect-an-nginx-server-with-fail2ban-on-ubuntu-20-04) and they seem decent enough - but I think I’ll need to get into more depth than that :)

  • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    Changing the port seems like a pointless step, just disallow access from everywhere and allow only from select IPs. Port scanners will scan all open ports and will detect that it’s ssh, regardless of port number.

    • PlexSheep@feddit.de
      2·
      1 year ago

      Agreed. Security through obscurity is a fallacy.

      If OP just wants to use it himself, a good idea might be to setup a VPN service and only allow the other services to be used from the VPN. That can be done with wire guard and a reverse proxy for example.

      • animist@lemmy.one
        02·
        1 year ago

        While I do completely agree, changing ports is more about getting rid of low-hanging fruit so some script kiddie doesn’t get into 22. But again I do agree with everything you said.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          Just firewall the port and there’s no difference for your hypothetical script kiddies. Don’t ever do security by obscurity.

        • PlexSheep@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          Of you have Skript kiddies logging in successfully on 22, you have way different problems.

          Of course, changing a port number is not a good security improvement even in the realm of security through obscurity.

  • baltakatei@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Maybe try out FreedomBox? freedombox is a Debian package which automatically sets up apache2, firewalld, fail2ban and Letʼs Encrypt. It also automatically adds pre-canned configuration files for applications you install with it (e.g. Mediawiki, WordPress, Matrix, Postfix/Dovecot). The theoretical goal of FreedomBox is to allow anyone to set up a webserver and administer it via a webUI. So, although I would say itʼs not quite there yet for command-line-illiterate users, I have found the software useful as a turnkey server to see what makes certain web applications tick, albeït in mostly vanilla form.

    For example, after installing a new app like WordPress, you could examine what exactly the FreedomBox scripts changed in the /etc/apache2/ or /etc/fail2ban/ configuration files.