Hey everyone,
I’m one of the people who still used proton and am now in the process of switching everything and trying to selfhost more.
I sucessfully setup Vaultwarden. I also decided I should move away from having my dockers publicly exposed with nginx reverse proxy and switched everything over to netbird. Im using their proxy feature now to access everything with custom domains and followed a tutorial to setup a bring your own proxy server on a vps. So now all my services are only accessible when my netbird vpn is active. I also spun up a pihole docker and added that to my netbird dns servers to try and get ad blocking on my mobile devices. So far so good.
I wonder however that while some webui’s like vaultwarden run with https, others like radarr dont. Is this a problem or does it not matter so much since i have the vpn running?
I dont really understand how I would go about making them https though. Im on unraid for my dockers and don’t see why some use https and others don’t.
Sorry if this is a convoluted post, I’m quite in over my head with all the networking and dns stuff and just hoping I’m not doing something stupid.
Thanks for your help!
wow, I didnt expect so many replies, thank you guys so much! Really Cool to see the fediverse this alive. Ill definitely dive in to all your suggestion and try to get ssl running on all services just to be safe. I think I had this figured out back when I used npm but now that i use the netbird proxy service to link to the services directly, Im not sure how a proxy like npm or caddy or traefik would fit into the equation. But I’m sure ill find something with some trial and error
A reverse proxy like Caddy can get a ssl cert via dns challenge and add ssl to all your internal self hosted services, provided you have a domain hosted somewhere supported.
With everything behind tailscale, and hence no need for opening the firewall, my DNS challenge failed when I tried to set it up last time using certbot.
A dns challenge requires no inbound connections. You misconfigured something.
I read up on this since it was in my backlog anyway, but seems from Let’s Encrypt’s documentation that it is an issue for HTTP-01 challenges. Probably an issue with regards to terminology on my part since DNS-01 is exactly what makes this work.
So, HTTPS prevents people on the network from hijacking the connection or spying on what you do with the website or your passwords. If you have a VPN and no evil devices inside your network you are likely fine, and many things don’t need HTTPS-level of safety.
That said, browsers make using HTTP almost unusable nowadays, because over the internet you really want your connection to not be hyjacked, and almost nobody self-hosts (sadly).
I would reccommend to set up a reverse proxy to do https for all services you host, even if you only use it via lan/vpn. Adding a new service then becomes just hosting it over HTTP, and have your reverse proxy converting the connection to HTTPS.
If you have a domain, you can request a wildcard cert from let’s encrypt and use that also for internal domains (they don’t need to be reachable from the public internet, but you might need to expose the ACME challenge file).
If you want to learn a lot about certificates you can go the self-signed route, but you’ll have to install the certificate on every device you use to access your services (guests will get huge warnings when trying to access your pages, if you give them access to them). Once set up it’s more flexible though, and if you configure your dns server you can have whatever domain you want, even nonexistent or unavailable ones.
Most (if not all) reverse proxies will allow you to add a certificate for your sites locally. I run everything over wireguard when I’m outside my network, and have NGINX Proxy Manager for all my routing and certificate needs. Works flawlessly so far.
Some features like copying to your clipboard will only work if you’re using https
If nothing’s exposed and it’s all behind Netbird, you don’t strictly need it. I still would, because apps like Vaultwarden’s web vault won’t load without a secure context. A wildcard cert via DNS challenge is a one-time setup. Everything else is optional.
Yes, because an attacker already in your network will be able to view non SSL traffic.
I even have my unRAID endpoints using https. You can do self signed, or you can use something like let’s encrypt to do it for you. I use wildcard certs as any signed certs with the full subdomain can expose what services I host internally (since signed certificate provisioning is, by design, a public process).
if you’re accessing over the internet, always use TLS/HTTPS.
if you’re accessing over LAN, you should still use TLS/HTTPS.
just because you’re hosting the app locally doesn’t mean the JS embedded in the page is safe. HTTPS will ensure that all your traffic is encrypted so only you and the server knows what it contains.
if the JS on the page is unsafe then HTTPS wouldn’t help right? The JS could scrape all the info client-side and extradite it.
AFAIK the reason why you’d use HTTPS on your LAN is if you’re afraid of middleman attacks in your LAN, like a malicious device that pretends to be the internet router.
Wait what does embedded JS have to do with it? If it’s HTTPS the JS will still run and still be able to do whatever it did before AFAIK.
Adding to this, the only time I dont use HTTPS/TLS is when I am accessing localhost, prior to moving a service to a subdomain to give it HTTPS/TLS…
short answer (and the safest one) is yes, use HTTPS always.
However, if and only if a service you are using is confined locally or via your privately hosted VPN (this just means not available over the public internet) you are probably OK without, unless there are other people on your local network who might be interested in snooping.
with your VPN (looks like netbird in this case) you should be OK, as the VPN handles encryption in the absense of HTTPS.
For more research checkout LetsEncrypt. its a super simple way to setup SSL (Which generally makes up the S part in HTTPS) and it’s free.
i think many of us started like you. you’ll get there, you’re just about to learn a lot of stuff before you do.
I suggest you should treat your own network as at least a little compromised.
Most houses run something that has a residential proxy, browsers like Chrome are happy to snoop on your local network, and apps and smart devices are completely free to use your network as they see fit by default.
Anything that has sensitive data should be handled via https.
agreed. this is part of the reason i have separate VLANs for my server, IoT network, Management network, guests, and home computers. I also consciously try not to use programs like Chrome and all my traffic goes through OPNSense/Unbound DNS.
i realize not everyone has the equipment for / can do all of that though. And that despite all of that and more, I’m still compromised to anyone with dedication. or a fucking ai
I just want to point out that it’s not just other people who might be interested in snooping. Compromised smart home equipment is a big potential vector of attack if services are unencrypted on your home network.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1966/
And that’s why IMHO they all need to be segregated in a VLAN with limited/no Internet access.
Websites exist just to look through exposed pc’s files and webcams, or used to at least
Yes, always use HTTPS, even on local networks if there ever are more than one device on the network.
The way to handle services with/without HTTPS is to put everything behind a reverse proxy that automatically handles certificates. Since you’re using NGINX, you can try setup certbot, or switch to something like Caddy that has certificate handling built in. If you have all your Docker containers on one server, you can look at Traefik.
Question: I have a remote VPS running Caddy, which sends requests through a WireGuard tunnel to my OPNsense router, which then forwards them on to my VMs running Nextcloud and Jellyfin. Is it possible to use the same certificate locally? Whenever I access the services locally, I have to use http because apparently generating a self-signed certificate locally conflicted with the Caddy-generated certbot certificate.
Probably if you move Caddy to the local VM and then forward the ports 80 and 443 to the VPS through WG. So the VPS receives all requests, but instead of going through Caddy first and then through WG, they go straight through WG and into Caddy on your local VM. Then you can access Caddy both locally and externally through the VPS-WG tunnel.
I have no experience setting this up though, I don’t have a VPS in front of my lab.
Always use HTTPS. Especially if you’re using your services on mobile.
Imagine you’re on your friend’s WiFi, and you disconnect from your net bird/tailscale/wireguard connection to your self hosted network… Any and all mobile apps that require that secure connection, is going to attempt requests to your internal services and sending auth/session token details along the requests.
A bad actor on your friend’s WiFi network, could, in theory, capture these requests and now you’re at the mercy of how well those services are written.
This all may sound a bit paranoid, but it is what we are trying to mitigate here.
I’m not sure I understand this. If I’m on my phone and connect using wire guard or teleport and I’m connected to a public wifi, I don’t understand the risks. Can you explain them? Thanks, I genuinely don’t understand. I thought encrypted tunnels were safe?
Sometimes your connection might not work correctly, and you’re not connected to your secure network. Like how VPNs will have kill switches (prevents you from accessing the Internet if the connection to the VPN isn’t successful) to prevent leaks during those spotty connections. Without HTTPS, during those spotty connection times, you’re sending your auth/session details plain-text on an unsafe network.
Https with X.509 is full of holes.
You should be using client side encryption using a pinned certificate.
If nothing else, use Tor Onion Services.
Bro what? The exit nodes see all traffic unencrypted in Tor
Nope. Onion Service’s traffic is end to end encrypted.
And it’s a pinned key that cannot be mistaken, because the .onion address is a derivative of the hash of the Key’s fingerprint.
Interesting. TIL!
I was definitely under the impression that exit nodes were able to see all traffic unencrypted, but maybe that was from an earlier version of Tor. Now I’ve RTFM and by god you’re right!
It depends on if you’re visiting a clearnet site or a .onion site.
The security benefits are magnitudes greater for Onion Services.
Every bank should run Onion Services. It’s for security, not necessarily anonymity
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CA (SSL) Certificate Authority DNS Domain Name Service/System IoT Internet of Things for device controllers SSO Single Sign-On TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging nginx Popular HTTP server
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If you’re not using https, then anyone who can see the traffic in your VPN can see everything you do.
Whether that’s a problem depends. In principle, as long as access to your VPN is restricted to people you trust, then http inside it is fine. In practice, if your security isn’t perfect, and someone gets access to your VPN, then https provides a meaningful second line of defense.
My recommendation would be to never use http for anything where a breach would be really painful. It’s good that vaultwarden is on https. Beyond that, https is absolutely the best practice, but if someone getting access to your service is only a mild inconvenience, then leaving it on http is fine as long as it’s only accessible inside your VPN - the risk is relatively low, and the consequences aren’t bad.
