Hello all! Yesterday I started hosting forgejo, and in order to clone repos outside my home network through ssh://, I seem to need to open a port for it in my router. Is that safe to do? I can’t use a vpn because I am sharing this with a friend. Here’s a sample docker compose file:
version: "3"
networks:
forgejo:
external: false
services:
server:
image: codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo:7
container_name: forgejo
environment:
- USER_UID=1000
- USER_GID=1000
- FORGEJO__database__DB_TYPE=postgres
- FORGEJO__database__HOST=db:5432
- FORGEJO__database__NAME=forgejo
- FORGEJO__database__USER=forgejo
- FORGEJO__database__PASSWD=forgejo
restart: always
networks:
- forgejo
volumes:
- ./forgejo:/data
- /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
ports:
- "3000:3000"
- "222:22" # <- port 222 is the one I'd open, in this case
depends_on:
- db
db:
image: postgres:14
restart: always
environment:
- POSTGRES_USER=forgejo
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=forgejo
- POSTGRES_DB=forgejo
networks:
- forgejo
volumes:
- ./postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
And to clone I’d do
git clone ssh://git@<my router ip>:<the port I opened, in this case 222>/path/to/repo
Is that safe?
EDIT: Thank you for your answers. I have come to the conclusion that, regardless of whether it is safe, it doesn’t make sense to increase the attack surface when I can just use https and tokens, so that’s what I am going to do.
Opening ports on your router is never safe ! There’re alot of bots trying to bruteforce opening ports on the web (specially ssh port 22)
With SSH I would disable the password authentication a only used key based authentication. Also disable root access. (Don’t know how it works with forgero though)
I would recommend something like wireguard, you still need to open a port on your router, but as long as they don’t have your private key, they can’t bruteforce it. (You can even share the wireguard tunnel with your friend :))
Also use a reverse proxy with your docker containers.
There are a lot of things you could do to secure everything, but If you relatively new to selfhosting, there’s a steep learning curve and a lot of time needed to properly secure everthing up. You could be safe by doing nothing for a few months but as soon as someone got into your system, you’re fucked !
But don’t discourage yourself, selfhosting is fun !
Opening ports on your router is never safe !
This is both true and highly misleading. Paranoia isn’t a replacement for good security.
I would recommend something like wireguard, you still need to open a port on your router, but as long as they don’t have your private key, they can’t bruteforce it.
The same is true of ssh when using keys to authenticate.
You’re right, but only if you are an experienced IT guy in enteprise environnement. Most users (myself included) on Lemmy do not have the necessary skills/hardware to properly configure and protect their networking system, thats way I consider something like wireguard way more secure than opening an SSH port.
Sure SSH key based configuration is also doing a great job but there is way more error prone configuration with an SSH connection than a wireguard tunnel.
You’re right, but only if you are an experienced IT guy in enteprise environnement. Most users (myself included) on Lemmy do not have the necessary skills/hardware to properly configure and protect their networking system, thats way I consider something like wireguard way more secure than opening an SSH port.
But it doesn’t help to just tell newbs that “THAT’S INSECURE” without providing context. It 1) reinforces the idea that security “is a thing” rather than “something you do” and 2) doesn’t give them any further reference for learning.
It’s why some people in this community think that putting a nginx proxy in front of their webapp somehow increases their security posture. Because you don’t have “direct access” to the webapp. It’s ridiculous.
Sure SSH key based configuration is also doing a great job but there is way more error prone configuration with an SSH connection than a wireguard tunnel.
In this case it’s handled by forgejo.
As of now all advice here is kinda missing the point or wrong… (Exept the one recommendation to do updates ;-) I wouldn’t use Cloudflare as it’s really bad for freedom, watches your traffic and most interesting things aren’t even in the free/cheap plans… You can’t restrict connections to the “Established state” or you can’t ever connect to your server… And SSH is a safe protocol. Just depends on the strength of your passwords… And yeah, opening ports is never 100% safe. Neither is using computers. They can be hacked but that’s not helping… And I’d agree using Wireguard or Tailscale would help. But you already said you don’t want a VPN…
I didn’t have a proper look at the Forgejo Docker container. I’d say it’s safe. It’s probably using keys instead of passwords(?!) I hope they configured it properly if they ship it per default. And it’s running sandboxed in your Docker container anyways and not running a system shell on the machine.
The issue with SSH is, there are lots of bots scanning the internet for SSH servers and testing passwords all day. Your server will be subject to a constant stream of brute-forcing attempts. Unless you take some precautions. Usually that’s done by blocking attackers after some amount of failed login attempts. This is either preconfigured in your Docker container (you should check, or watch the logs.) Or you’d need to use something like fail2ban on top. Or ignore the additional load and have all your users use good passwords.
(What I do is use Git over https. That worked out of the box while ssh would have required additional work. But I also have lots of other ports forwarded to several services on my home-server. Including ssh. No VPN, no Cloudflare … I have fail2ban and safe passwords. I’m happy with that.)
I have come to the conclusion that, regardless of whether it is safe, it doesn’t make sense to increase the attack surface when I can just use https and tokens, so that’s what I am going to do.
Are you already exposing HTTPS? Because if not you would still be “increasing your attack surface”.
