As the title says, I want to know the most paranoid security measures you’ve implemented in your homelab. I can think of SDN solutions with firewalls covering every interface, ACLs, locked-down/hardened OSes etc but not much beyond that. I’m wondering how deep this paranoia can go (and maybe even go down my own route too!).
Thanks!
One day I will setup my security onion, but I’m procrastinating
Following for my own edification!
I’m an enterprise guy, so that’s the explanation for non home use things.
- VPN for anything not my web or certificate revocation distribution point
- Sophos IPS
- sophos utm for web application firewall
- transparent inline web proxy, sophos is doing https inspection. I have internal CA and all clients trust it. I don’t inspect medical or banking, other common sense stuff.
- heavily vlan segmented with firewall between
- my windows clients are managed by active directory with heavy handed GPOs.
- least priv accounts, different accounts for workstation admin, server, domain, network devices
- security Onion IDS
- separate red forest that has admin accounts for my management access and accounts on devices
- trellix antivirus and global reputation based file monitoring
- I’ve started applying disa STIGs on servers
- site to site VPN with other family member household. They get managed trellix av also.
- my public identity accounts like MS,.Google, etc all need 2fa, token, etc.
I bet this can still get exploited, just would take effort hopefully none does for a home network.
I’m still one shitty windows zero day click away from getting my workstation or browser tokens owned though, I can feel it.
Also laughing because that’s how some companies get owned, IP stolen, etc.
There has to be balance, if your life using their system sucks so hard you can’t do your job or meet production marks, you get creative.
My industry has to prioritize security over productivity. It’s almost impossible to get work done.
I’m still one shitty windows zero day click away from getting my workstation or browser tokens owned though, I can feel it.
As somebody taking like 0% of all that measures and not having any problem, luck was involved for sure, unless they have a good reason to attack you in particular… I feel like you will be fine…
Ha, probably. It’s fun to learn stuff though.
Working in this field, almost every company has been beached, IP stolen, etc.
Sometimes your home IP gets hit in an automated scan for a vulnerability and then auto exploited by automation. I’m hoping not to get random chance added to a botnet.
You seem to have a great setup. Since this comment touches on slightly advanced topics, I’ll ask this here:
- What use do you have for a WAF?
- How did you get your Android clients to trust your certificate? Do you use an MDM? Did you root your devices to access the trusted root store?
- Segmenting stuff with VLANs, subnetting and ACLs is a great idea, but do you also make sure that the firmware of the device is somewhat robust? Although I suppose you don’t have to worry about it if Sophos sends out regular updates, however I hate the idea of my switches and routers having to connect to the Internet, pass along credentials and the sort to be able to get updates.
Your measures seem to be focussed more on security than privacy - which is great! It’s my fault for not specifying it in the post, but I’d definitely like to know if you have done anything specific to keep your network private as well as secure.
Thanks for your wonderful comment - saved!
- Exchange on prem 😳
- Both mdm,.Ms intune, and just installing the root cert manually in trusted store. You don’t have to root Android for that. It presents some warnings, appropriate.
- My Sophos is self contained. It does radius against active directory. It wants IPS and other updates though.
I guess the firmware is as good as possible. All network devices are just computers and can be exploited. I use a Cisco router as my actual gateway. Sophos is inline after that.
Privacy. 🤔
Not much. I have certain traffic go through a VPN to the Internet, but that’s split tunneled.
I use incognito? That doesn’t really do anything, ha.
I’m slowly killing web browser tracking and cookie stuff that group policy allows.
I didn’t know MS exchange could be used as a WAF. Will need to read more about that.
Can I host Intune completely on-prem?
What do you mean by “My Sophos is self-contained”?
Does your Cisco router get updates? My problem with these companies is that they build backdoors in their firmware for agencies to use. Are you monitoring the network usage of your Cisco gateway?
Using AD/RADIUS on-prem is an intriguing idea. I didn’t consider it because if my AD server goes down I’m essentially locked out of my services. I need to think more on this. Thanks.
- Custom Router/Firewall running OPNsense and the Sensei plugin
- Extensive DNS filtering through Pihole
- Redirecting all DNS requests to my Pihole through OPNsense
- My entire network is behind a multi hop VPN
- I don’t let any Windows systems connect to the internet, instead, I have a Linux server which is connected to the internet (through a VPN of course) and runs a browser, and I use X2go to access the browser which is running on the Linux server
Since you’re running x86 for your router, do you actively prevent ME from trying to connect to the Internet?
I am aware of the ME, but I can’t really do anything about it. Current ARM SBCs are not suitable for a router/firewall (at least in my experience). I’m not that concerned about it though.
OpenWRT isn’t half bad for usual “router stuff”, but advanced usage is a bit hard to do. Of course, that doesn’t eliminate the problem since ARM can have plenty of backdoors too
Wouldn’t that last bullet mean you’re not updating the windows machines whatsoever? Would this not cause more security issues in the long run, considering “connected tot he internet” isn’t a requirement to spread an infection.
It might sound ridiculous, but I currently also run a WSUS server to get Windows updates. But I will probably replace my entire Windows setup with a better solution. Since I don’t run Windows bare-metal anymore, I’m looking forward to using offline Windows VMs on my Proxmox host and just accessing the internet directly from my Linux machine.
