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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Is it practically impossible for a newcomer selfhost without using centralised services, and get DDOSed or hacked? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How do you reach into your server with SSH disabled without lugging a monitor and keyboard around?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Then use Wireguard to get into your local network. Simple as. All security risks that don't need to be accessed by the public (document servers, ssh, internal tools, etc...) can be accessed via VPN while the port forwarded servers are behind a reverse proxy, TLS, and an authentication layer like Authelia/authentik for things that only a small group needs to access.

Sorry, but there is 1 case in 10000 where a home user would have to have publicly exposed SSH and 9999 cases of 10000 where it is not needed at all and would only be done out of laziness or lack of knowledge of options.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

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.