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!!!
General advice would be to look boring and hide your IP as much as you are able (get a domain). As long as you’re not looking juicy you won’t attract skilled attention. It’s like locking a bike, most bad actors will just pass by looking around for one without a lock or a real fancy one worth their resources.
You can utilize Cloudflare’s free offerings, starting with simple stuff. Their DNS Proxy is essentialy a single-click but will help substantially. You can build on top of that with simple WAF rules, such as droping connection attempts from IPs originating from countries notorious for “poking around”. You can also reverse that rule and whitlelist only your country.
Keep your firewall tight, don’t expose other ports, put your services behind a reverse proxy and redirect everything to HTTPS. Start simple, constantly improve, learn more advanced methods/concepts.
How is getting a domain protecting you IP? Wouldn’t your IP still be accessible even after you link it to a domain?