You should be concerned, because there is always a risk, but there is also a risk when you are just using internet even without selfhosting. It is good to remember some rules:

1. Keep apps up to date
2. Open only that ports, that you need (80, 443, maybe 22 for ssh)
3. If you open ssh port, use keys authentication and cut possibility logging with password
4. Do not expose apps, that you are not need in this form, for example Yunohost allows to hide apps behind Yunohost SSO logging page
5. Using cloudflare or/and Fail2Ban is cool
6. Maybe I am a little bit paranoic, but I do not expose apps, that can be used anonymously by everyone, for example link shorters or pastebin alternatives.

It is not all of course.

i use strong passwords and cloudflare tunnels with zero trust. if a site has an option to run without needing https, i use wireguard or tailscale

Either tailscale the network and not worry about it being “public facing” or if it must be somewhere in the denizens then an outbound only connection between a secure remote server and my server.

Password protect your services, set up your web server correctly, use cloudflare for some extra security against stuff like DDoS/DoS attacks. Also less is more, do not expose what you don’t need to expose.

There is always inherent risk with opening up your stuff to the world wide web.

Some stuff you can’t even secure yourself; some services just have bad security practices. The only way to fix them would be to wait for an update or submit a pull request.

Here is my setup:

Cloudflare fronts all of my webserver traffic, and I have firewall rules in Cloudflare.

Then I have an OPNsense firewall that blocks a list of suspicious ips that updates automatically, and only allows port 80/443 connections from Cloudflare’s servers. The only other port I have open is for Wireguard to access all of my internal services. This does not go through Cloudflare obviously, and I use a different domain for my actual IP. I keep Vaultwarden internal for extra safety.

Next I run every internet facing service in k3s in a separate namespace. This namespace has its own traefik reverse proxy separate from my internal services. This is what port 80/443 forwards to. The namespace has network policies that prevent any egress traffic to my local network. Every container in the WAN facing namespace runs as a user with no login permission to the host. I am also picky about what storage I mount in them.

If you can get through that you deserve my data I think.

Yes you should be worried. Dont expose services you’re not able to keep up to date and know how to manage and secure. Using tailscale is a great alternative as it allows you to have access without exposing anything to the internet, I’d prefer that. For everything else, subscribe to a CVE service for those (I use nextcloud and matrix and follow all security findings) and be ready to take them offline as soon as a critical exploit appears. Dont expose your passwords directly to the internet - ever; no matter if anyone else tells you its OK.

thank you so much for all the suggestions!

My biggest takeaway from all this is managed VPN solutions like Tailscale are cheap ($0), easy to set up, and lets me not expose ports to the outside world.

Isolate your programs, keep the critical stuff away from the public using tailscale or a VPN, hell, even an SSH tunnel could work in your case, make sure to keep different password for each software for your database. If possible virtualize each software to keep them from communicating to other softwares. This is how i manage my infrastructure (or should be, i haven’t gotten yet to use tailscale for admin only websites).

It’s always a risk, but it comes down to trusting that the services you host are secure enough, and that your skill in making them public keeps them safe.

Why not use a proper VPN instead of SSH tunnels?