Hello,

Some time ago, I started self-hosting applications, but only on my local network. So far, it’s working fine, but I can’t access them as soon as I go outside (which is completely normal).

For the past few days I’ve been looking for a relatively secure way of accessing my applications from outside.

I don’t need anyone but myself to have access to my applications, so from what I’ve understood, it’s not necessarily useful to set up a reverse-proxy in that case and it would be simpler to set up a VPN.

From what I’ve seen, Wireguard seems to be a good option. At first glance, I’d have to install it on the machine containing my applications, port-forward the Wireguard listening port and configure my other devices to access this machine through Wireguard

However, I don’t have enough hindsight to know whether this is a sufficient layer of security to at least prevent bots from accessing my data or compromising my machine.

I’ve also seen Wireguard-based solutions like Tailscale or Netbird that seem to make configuration easier, but I have a hard time knowing if it would really be useful in my case (and I don’t really get what else they are doing despite simplifying the setup).

Do you have any opinions on this? Are there any obvious security holes in what I’ve said? Is setting up a VPN really the solution in my case?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

  • waterproof@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    2·
    19 hours ago

    Okay, so that’s pretty much the setup I had in mind. Good to know there is not much need for an extra step for security, thanks for the answer !

    Well, I guess that would still be vulnerable to DDOS attacks, but that would just prevent me from accessing my cinnamon apple-pie recipe from my self hosted recipe manager for some time. A bit mean, but not catastrophic.

    I wondered if there would be some other attacks that could compromise my machine with only a wireguard setup, but that’s a good sign if there is nothing obvious.