Hey guys,
after reading up on selfhosting for weeks now I finally decided to take the plunge today and tried setting up my own nextcloud & jellyfin instances. For this purpose I am using a mini PC. (similiar to an Intel NUC)
Now I would like to make both services available to the internet so I could show images to friends while I’m at their place / watch movies with them.
The problem is I am currently not very educated on which security measures I would have to take to ensure that my server / mini PC doesn’t immediately become an easy target for a hacker, especially considering that I would host private photos on the nextcloud.
After googling around I feel like I find a lot of conflicting information as well as write-ups that I don’t fully grasp with my limited knowledge so if you guys have any general advice or even places to learn about all these concepts I would be absolutely delighted!
Thank you guys sooo much in advance for any and all help, the c/selfhosted community has been nothing but a great resource for me so far!!!
Sounds like security by obscurity to me. But still, nice result.
It’s more targeted to avoid automated attacks.
Nah, as long as you keep following recommended security practices it can be useful to get rid of unneeded load being put on your server by malicious bots.
I had a lot of problems with botnets hammering my SSH service on my private VPS. Moving it to a different port would only work for a few days before they’d be back at it again.
I wasn’t worried they’d get in. But logging in to my server would take ages because it was under so much load (VPS is pretty low-spec). Finally decided to shove my SSH service behind port knocking. Got rid of all the bots knocking at my door.
Obscurity has its uses, as long as you don’t consider it a replacement for security. It’s just an additional tool.
Yes you are correct. I still have other security measures like only login with keys, root login disabled, Max auth tries set to 1, things I’ve learned every now and then. For my use case it has been good enough, but it doesn’t hurt to improve things whenever I learn something new.