Self-Hosted Main

In networking, you generally either have an authentication mechanism, or you don’t.

It sounds like you don’t have “control” (can install a vpn) on the client devices. This makes authentication difficult. We need some aspect of the client that the server can use to make a decision.

Without touching the client, there’s only really two details we can use - the source ip address of the client, and the port that they are connecting to.

If a client wants to connect to the default minecraft port, it could be a scanner - but if it’s non-default, then the probability of being a scanner is much lower.

A firewall to do geo-based ip blocking will also cut down significantly on noise.

After that, minecraft’s built in authentication is pretty good.

With all of the above, we would know that the connector is coming from an allowed location, knows to ask for your non-standard port number, and has a valid minecraft account - that sounds pretty good to me.

And if you’re running a cracked server, there are other assorted tricks to avoid bots. I ran an open-to-the-world, default port, no auth server for some time; and probably ran into a single robot. Thankfully I shut things down before log4j

Seeing as you say port 25565 you're using Minecraft Java, so i'd prob just do this:

https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/post/how-to-set-up-and-run-a-really-powerful-free-minecraft-server-in-the-cloud

Couple of points:

1. Make your account PAYG to lessen likelihood of server being shutdown (will still be free)

2. Take nightly backups just in case.

You could stump up for a management console like AMP if you want to make things a bit easier.

GL.

If you are willing to put the extra effort in you can try and get aws or Oracle cloud free tier and open ports there and setup some sort of tunneling

I just hosted it as a docker container, exposed the ports and setup a white list.

Never had an issue with it. I have a domain already for other stuff i host, so just created a play..com which can be used behind non proxied cloudflare. I have the docker restrictions pretty limited though so just enough for it to run basically and running from a non root user. I think in most cases this would be fine. White list will stop randoms from joining unless that persons account gets compromised. I also run backups as well just in case something does happen, that role based on activity. All of these are easily done and available in docker making supporting it easy, as well as utilities like Rcon etc, these obviously I don't expose.

I'm running it inside a podman container with 16 G of RAM, with a velocity proxy etc. Should be ideal

When hosting stuff for friends specifically, I got a firewall rule in place that only allows their duckDNS addresses to connect to whatever I'm hosting, and don't want publicly accessible.

Much safer than a Minecraft whitelist.

How about using ZeroTier? You could omit exposing the server?

I built a Tailnet and gave them access to my VM running the Server.

Just make sure you whitelist your server, as there are "groups" out there that scan the entire internet for Minecraft servers running on default/common ports, and grief the shit out of whatever they can.

https://youtu.be/JJzv4G9SytU?si=x2coqqhPx6IgXrzx

A colleague wrote this - https://blog.openziti.io/set-up-a-secure-multiplayer-minecraft-server

I've used tailscale in the past, it's worked great.

If you ever need to remote in to help them set up or configure something, dwservice.net is wonderful and free too

I have a custom portal where players login and tell it to whitelist their IP address. This then feeds into a pfsense dynamic list to allow the traffic through the perimeter firewall.

Works fairly well and it’s semi easy for players to login. This allows me to have it “open” to the internet and not have it hammered from all over the internet. It doesn’t handle dynamic IPs but players public IPs don’t change too regularly most of the time.

Mine is forwarded via caddy through a Google domain. Whitelist for friends and family

Latency is a real issue. I've run Minecraft servers at home and through digital ocean. Latency is real particularly with a lot of players. I kind of have up after my son kind of graduated out of Minecraft phase. I did an inordinate amount of tweaking. Looking back..I probaby would not do it again

I have my servers port forwarded but sitting in their own vlan

There is no such thing. Minecraft hackers are brilliant. Dmz that thing, maybe use a vps, run backups constantly, vet your server plug-ins. Backdoors on Minecraft servers are downright routine.