this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
107 points (98.2% liked)

Selfhosted

52011 readers
1144 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
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
107
What's the real danger of opening ports? (feddit.it)
submitted 3 days ago by dontblink@feddit.it to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
67 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
[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Move the port to a high port. Install fail2ban and set it to ban quickly. The downside of that is if you fat finger your login more than a couple of times it might ban you. I have whitelist on mine of the IP addresses I know I will be logging in from. I also run TCP wrappers which far too many people screech about it being depreciated. it works and also if set up properly logs all login attempts. I get about three or four a month on my random high port. Of course most of this depends on you trying to gain access from known addresses or subnet.

I only have the ssh login as a backup. I run wireguard with the ports set to something other than the default port. It allows me to gain access to my home network quickly. While its always possible there might be some bug that would allow someone to access it in the future it works as well as any other solution.