this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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Selfhosted

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How do I avoid becoming one with the botnet? (programming.dev)
submitted 6 months ago by bitcrafter@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I find the idea of self-hosting to be really appealing, but at the same time I find it to be incredibly scary. This is not because I lack the technical expertise, but because I have gotten the impression that everyone on the Internet would immediately try to hack into it to make it join their bot net. As a result, I would have to be constantly vigilant against this, yet one of the numerous assailants would only have to succeed once. Dealing with this constant threat seems like it would be frightening enough as a full-time job, but this would only be a hobby project for me.

How do the self-hosters on Lemmy avoid becoming one with the botnet?

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[–] glizzyguzzler@piefed.blahaj.zone 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The only thing that can get hacked is something that responds on the World Wide Web.

So you limit the scope of what talks to the WWW:

Wireguard VPN will not respond unless the magic keys are correct, it’s ideal security and obscurity. Put everything you can behind it.

For things I want on the WWW without a VPN, I split out two options otherwise.

  1. Caddy checking mTLS certificates that basically allows a device access without extra steps - relying on Caddy to be strong and mTLS to be strong.

  2. Authentik’s proxy check, I think Authelia has this too, but to access a site you hit an Authentik login first.

For both of those, you rely on those services not having 0-day hacks. More likely for these services to stay ahead of the game and/or fix quick than something that doesn’t exist just to do authentication. I run them in containers that are run by independent users and are read-only with capabilities limited, in a VM.

I’d say the Caddy route is more secure than Authentik, but it needs more effort to setup the certificate stuff. Authentik route needs a web browser to log in with. Obviously the WG VPN is primo.

Edit: also tailscale is just managed wireguard, so it has the same benefits as a wireguard vpn with the catch a company has access to your network also now. But really simplifies setup…..

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

Authelia does have it too, I use that with traefik