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What's the real danger of opening ports? (feddit.it)

submitted 13 hours ago by dontblink@feddit.it to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Some services run really good behind a reverse proxy on 443, but some others can really become an hassle.. And sometimes just opening other ports would be easier than to try configuring everything to work through 443.

An example that comes to my mind is SSH, yeah you can use SSLH to forward requests coming from 443 to 22, but it's so much easier to just leave 22 open..

Now, for SSH, if you have certificate authentication or a strong password, I think you can feel quite safe, but what about other random ports? What risks I'm exposing my server to if I open some of them when needed for a service? Is the effort of trying to pass everything through 443/80 worth it?

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[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 19 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

It's not so much about the ports, its about what you're running that's accessible to the public.

If you have a single website on 443 and SSH on 22 (or a non-standard port like 6543) you're generally considered safe. This is 2 services and someone would need to attack one of the two to get in.

If you have a VPN on 4567 and everything behind the VPN then someone would need to hack the VPN to get in.

If you have 100 different things behind 443 then someone just needs to find a hole in one to get in.

Generally ssh, nginx, a VPN are all safe and they should be on their own ports.

[–] sfjvvssss@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago

Sorry to nitpick but I feel like beimg precise here is important. Nginx is a project, ssh a protocol and VPN an overlay network, so more of a concept. All 3 can be run somewhere on the spectrum between quite secure and super insecure. Also safe and secure are two different things, I guess you meant secure so no big deal.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Exposing SSH is not recommended, it's a hot attack target. Expose a VPN and use that to SSH in.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Or use port-knocking for SSH.

[–] sfjvvssss@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

While this helps getting volume down it just adds a layer of obscurity and the service behind should still be treated and maintained as if it was fully public-facing.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 9 hours ago

Everything you expose is fine until somebody finds a zero day.

Everything these days is being built from a ton of publically maintained packages. All it takes is for one of those packages to fall into the wrong hands and get updated which happens all the time.

If you're going to expose web yourself, use anubus and fail2ban

Put everything that doesn't absolutely need to be public open behind a VPN.

Keep all of your software updated, constant vigilance.