As the title says, I want to know the most paranoid security measures you’ve implemented in your homelab. I can think of SDN solutions with firewalls covering every interface, ACLs, locked-down/hardened OSes etc but not much beyond that. I’m wondering how deep this paranoia can go (and maybe even go down my own route too!).
Thanks!
I’ve replaced reconnaissance commands (a handful of them found here: https://www.cybrary.it/blog/linux-commands-used-attackers) – whoami, uname, id, uptime, last, etc
With shell scripts which run the command but also send me a notification via pushover. I’m running several internet-facing services, and the moment those get run because someone is doing some sleuthing inside the machine, I get notified.
It doesn’t stop people getting in, I’ve set up other things for that – but on the off chance that there is some zero-day that I don’t know about yet, or they’ve traversed the network laterally somehow, the moment they run one of those commands, I know to kill-switch the entire thing.
The thing is, security is an on-going process. Leave any computer attached to the internet long enough and it’ll be gotten into. I don’t trust being able to know every method that can be used, so I use this as a backup.
Never used it “in anger” but:
I have my firewall plugged into a metered outlet (plugged into a UPS). I have it set up to send me alerts if power draw increases beyond a certain threshold. I’ve tested it and wireguard is measurable (yay) but so are DDOS attacks. If I get that alert, I can choose to turn off that plug and take my whole network offline until I get home and can sort that out.
Gotten a few false positives over the years but mostly that is just texting my partner to ask what they are doing.
Aren’t you just DoSing yourself at that point?
Nice try, attacker trying to get me to do their reconnaissance work for them. I’m on to you.
My security is fairly simplistic but I’m happy with it
-
software protection
- fail2ban with low warning hold
- cert based login for ssh (no password Auth)
- Honeypot on all common port numbers, which if pinged leads to a permanent IP ban
- drop all firewall
- PSAD for intrusion/scanning protection (so many Russian scanners… lol)
- wireguard for VPN to access local virtual machines and resources
- external VPN with nordVPN for secure containers (yes I know nord is questionable I plan to swap when my sub runs out)
-
physical protection
- luksCrypt on the sensitive Data/program Drive ( I know there’s some security concerns with luksCrypt bite me)
- grub and bios locked with password
- UPS set to auto notify on power outage
- router with keep alive warning system that pings my phone if the lab goes offline and provides fallback dns
-
things I’ve thought about:
- a mock recovery partition entry that will nuke the Luks headers on entry (to prevent potential exploit getting through grub)
- removing super user access completely outside of local user access
-
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point CA (SSL) Certificate Authority DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web HTTPS HTTP over SSL IP Internet Protocol NAT Network Address Translation PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) SBC Single-Board Computer SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPN Virtual Private Network nginx Popular HTTP server
15 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.
[Thread #493 for this sub, first seen 6th Feb 2024, 16:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I understand some of these words.
My most paranoid config is disabling Ipv4
That’s it. If someone wants to attack me, they will need to adopt IPv6!
I’m somewhat paranoid therefore running several isolated servers. And it’s still not bulletproof and will never be!
- only the isolated server, ie. no internet access, can fetch data from the other servers but not vice versa.
- SSH access key based only
- Firewall dropping all but non-standard ports on dedicated subnets
- Fail2ban drops after 2 attempts
- Password length min 24 characters, 2FA, password rotation every 6 months
- Guest network for friends, can’t access any internal subnet
- Reverse proxy (https;443 port only)
- Any service is accessed by a non-privileged user
- Isolated docker services/databases and dedicated docker networks
- every drive + system Luks-encrypted w/ passphrase only
- Dedicated server for home automation only
- Dedicated server for docker services and reverse proxy only
- Isolated data/backup server sharing data to a tv box and audio system without network access via nfs
- Offsite data/backup server via SSH tunnel hosted by a friend
Would you have to compromise on your security according to your threat model if you ran VMs rather than dedicated devices? I’m no security engineer and I don’t know if KVM/QEMU can fit everyones needs, but AWS uses XCP-ng, and unless they’re using a custom version of it, all changes are pushed upstream. I’d definitely trust AWS’ underlying virtualisation layer for my VMs, but I wonder if I should go with XCP or KVM or bhyve.
This is my personal opinion, but podman’s networking seems less difficult to understand than Docker. Docker was a pain the first time I was reading about the networking in it.
Really like your setup. Do you have any plans to make it more private/secure?
I used VMs some time ago but never managed to look deeper into separation of bare metal vs VMs. Hence I can’t assess this reasonably.
Docker got me interested when it started and after discovering its networking capabilities I never looked back.
Basically I’m trying to minimize the possibility that by intercepting one dockerized service the attacker is able to start interacting with all devices. And I have lots of devices because of a fully automated house. ;) My paranoia will ensure the constant growth of privacy and security :)
