Netmaker VS How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

My plan is to set up an EC2 instance and host a VPN, considering options like Netmaker, OpenVPN, or Tailscale. The goal is to connect these devices to the VPN, enabling SSH access from any connected node. This method seems cost-effective(Considering I want to use 100s of devices and potentially 1000s) and straightforward, requiring a simple setup with a sudo apt command on the Raspberry Pi.

I'm wondering if there are any alternative approaches to achieve this. Is something like Netmaker or Tailscale feasible enough? If you have any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

https://github.com/gravitl/netmaker

Honorable mention:

SuperHighway84 - more of a Usenet-inspired darknet, but I love the concept + the author's personal website:

https://github.com/mrusme/superhighway84

Exciting news to share! Netmaker has officially embraced open source. This momentous decision was unveiled at the Open Source Summit in Europe when the pull request successfully merged, transitioning their server from the SSPL to the widely recognized Apache License 2.0.

While we've encountered some challenges and worked with vendors like Cisco to find solutions, I'm curious about recommendations for SD-WAN providers that are well-suited for SASE users. This includes not only Zscaler but also other options like Netmaker, Palo Alto, Cloudflare, Cisco, and Forcepoint.

Now, my main question is how I can link my DDNS host endpoint with my EC2 instances, allowing only my home network to access them. I've come across a variety of suggestions, such as Netmaker, OpenVPN, Tailscale etc. but I'm curious to hear your opinions on these solutions.

HN is somehow always timely. Currently, these folks expect me to sign a CLA for a one-byte change to their README: https://github.com/gravitl/netmaker/pull/2516

- own server costs about $5/month. I recommend using docker to deploy hbbr and hbbs. Back up the key in case you need to re-deploy. You do need to secure your Linux server, and this community-driven Github guide has some good tips to get started.

I have been using the How To Secure A Linux Server guide for quite a while and wanted to learn Ansible, so I created two playbooks to automate most of the guides content. The playbooks are still a work in progress.

If it works, I will then follow the hardening guide I did before (https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server) and test after every step

Maybe these two repos can help you, I've used them both from time to time to look up stuff I have no idea about as a frontend main: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server https://github.com/decalage2/awesome-security-hardening

> In short it’s all about control, privacy, and security, in that order.

I am going to strongly urge you to consider changing that order and move *security* to the first priority. I have long run my own servers, it is much easier to setup a server with strong security foundation, than to clean up afterwards.

As a beginner, you should stick to a well known and documented Linux server distribution such as Ubuntu Server LTS or Fedora. Only install the programs you need. Do not install a windowing system on it. Do everything for the server from the command line.

Here are a few blog posts I have bookmarked over the years that I think are geared to beginners:

"My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers": An quick walk through of how to do basic server security manually [1]. There was a good Hacker News discussion about this article, most of the response suggests using tools to automate these types of security tasks [2], however the short tutorial will teach you a great deal, and automation mostly only makes sense when you are deploying a number of similar servers. I definitely take a more manual hands-on approach to managing my personal servers compared to the ones I professionally deploy.

"How To Secure A Linux Server": An evolving how-to guide for securing a Linux server that, hopefully, also teaches you a little about security and why it matters. [3]

Both Linode[4] and Digital Ocean[5] have created good sets of Tutorials and documentation that are generally trustworthy and kept up-to-date

Good luck and have fun

[1]: https://sollove.com/2013/03/03/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-serve...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5316093

[3]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve...

[4]: https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/

[5]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials

I suggest these resources: - Some fundamentals: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-security.html - One of the best imho ( exhaustive list ): https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server - Ansible playbook to harden security by Jeff Geerling: https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-security - OAWSP Check list ( targeted for web apps... and honestly a bit overkill ): https://github.com/0xRadi/OWASP-Web-Checklist