I work in tech and am constantly finding solutions to problems, often on other people’s tech blogs, that I think “I should write that down somewhere” and, well, I want to actually start doing that, but I don’t want to pay someone else to host it.
I have a Synology NAS, a sweet domain name, and familiarity with both Docker and Cloudflare tunnels. Would I be opening myself up to a world of hurt if I hosted a publicly available website on my NAS using [insert simple blogging platform], in a Docker container and behind some sort of Cloudflare protection?
In theory that’s enough levels of protection and isolation but I don’t know enough about it to not be paranoid about everything getting popped and providing access to the wider NAS as a whole.
Update: Thanks for the replies, everyone, they’ve been really helpful and somewhat reassuring. I think I’m going to have a look at Github and Cloudflare’s pages as my first port of call for my needs.
Cloudflare tunnels are layer 7, so it’s not unlimited access by any means. This also means that certain things will break btw, for example if your website uses websockets to load information, that isn’t supported.
Next, I’d put the computer that is going to be hosting into an isolated vlan of its own and access via external URL only.
If you’re going to use docker images, make sure to vet that they’re updated often and always spin up the latest.
CF tunnels are layer 3, not 7 and they have support for web sockets. It’s basically wireguard VPN with a few extras built on top.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/faq/cloudflare-tunnels-faq/
That document doesn’t say what layer. But it does say it supports Websockets.
Just odd that when I try to set it up using a named tunnel I don’t get an option to specify the WS service type. However it does require a service type if you want to connect to it.
Looking at this page it would seem that it’s a layer 7. Although I could be wrong, but my front end app has issues finding my backend service for websockets.
Granted I even tried to connect to my private computer using other protocols. I couldn’t get through. Anyway I’m most likely going to be taking that project offline soon.
No, but I thought I clarified that when I said it’s basically wireguard VPN which operates using tcp/udp (layer 3.) layer 7 is stuff like https. CF tunnels are lower level.
Page you linked is missing the layer between CF and source server so it doesn’t indicate layer. You can lookup wireguard protocol if you want more details.
If you’re exposing via cloudflare tunnels instead of pointing at your public IP then eveything other people have said covers it. If you are using your public IP then it’s worth blocking non-cloudflare IPs from accessing the site directly
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CF CloudFlare DNS Domain Name Service/System IP Internet Protocol SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #384 for this sub, first seen 29th Dec 2023, 14:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I’m definitely a fan of Gitlab pages for simple webpages I just want on the Internet. It’s nice to have the code hosted anyways (gives me that off site back up safety so my stuff at home can go down if needed).
You’ll be fine enough as long as you enable MFA on your Nas, and ideally configure it so that anything “fun”, like administrative controls or remote access, are only available on the local network.
Synology has sensible defaults for security, for the most part. Make sure you have automated updates enabled, even for minor updates, and ensure it’s configured to block multiple failed login attempts.
You’re probably not going to get hackerman poking at your stuff, but you’ll get bots trying to ssh in, and login to the WordPress admin console, even if you’re not using WordPress.
A good rule of thumb for securing computers is to minimize access/privilege/connectivity.
Lock everything down as far as you can, turn off everything that makes it possible to access it, and enable every tool for keeping people out or dissuading attackers.
Now you can enable port 443 on your Nas to be publicly available, and only that port because you don’t need anything else.
You can enable your router to forward only port 443 to your Nas.It feels silly to say, but sometimes people think “my firewall is getting in the way, I’ll turn it off”, or “this one user needs read access to one file, so I’ll give read/write/execute privileges to every user in the system to this folder and every subfolder”.
So as long as you’re basically sensible and use the tools available, you should be fine.
You’ll still poop a little the first time you see that 800 bots tried to break in. Just remember that they’re doing that now, there’s just nothing listening to write down that they tried.However, the person who suggested putting cloudflare in front of GitHub pages and using something like Hugo is a great example of “opening as few holes as possible”, and “using the tools available”.
It’s what I do for my static sites, like my recipes and stuff.
You can get a GitHub action configured that’ll compile the site and deploy it whenever a commit happens, which is nice.I’ll let folks with more security experience dive into your specific question, but another option is to host your website on something like Github pages (using a static website generator like Jekyll) and point Cloudflare at it. That way you don’t need anything pointed at your local network, get the uptime of Github, and still benefit from your own domain name.
That’s what I’m doing with my own blog and it’s been great. Github provides the service for free but if they ever charge for it I’ll just start hosting it locally.
OK that’s genius, I will definitely look into that!
Or take github out of the equation and directly use cloudflare pages. It has its own pros and cons, but for a simple static blog it’ll be more than enough, and takes out the CNAME hassle.
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If you concerned about your exposed services being hacked, why not learn how to protect them properly from bad actors? There exists a wide range of solutions that attempt to specifically solve this problem.
why not learn how to protect them properly from bad actors?
Exactly. One way to start is asking for help on forum with people who like to talk about this kind of thing. Hope OP finds their way.
Not exactly. OP mentions he’s interested in using cloudflare/github pages where the security is managed by those platforms not the user.
