this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
58 points (98.3% liked)

Selfhosted

51947 readers
1108 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
58
What's the real danger of opening ports? (feddit.it)
submitted 13 hours ago by dontblink@feddit.it to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
35 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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

With SSH it is easier to do key authentication. Certificate authentication is supported but it is a little more hassle. Don't use password authentication as it is deprecated and not secure.

The key with SSH (openssh specifically) is that it is heavily audited so it is unlikely to have any issues. The problem is when you start exposing self hosted services with lots of attack surface. You need to be very careful when exposing services as web services are very hard to secure and can be the source of a compromise that you may or may not be aware of.

It is much safer to use a overlay VPN or some other frontend for authentication like mTLS or an authenticated reverse proxy.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Be sure to keep everything up to date too. Even openssh has had multiple vulnerabilities just this year.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

Always good advise

However, OpenSSH is pretty solid security wise. https://www.openssh.com/security.html

Note: it is best to check the official security pages instead of random websites.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Vendors packaging OpenSSH open up even more vulnerabilities that the devs of OpenSSH can't protect you from. See the recent xz poisoned OpenSSH packages

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 0 points 6 hours ago

Better yet: compile from source and keep features to a minimum.
Applies to any package really.