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!
Never used it “in anger” but:
I have my firewall plugged into a metered outlet (plugged into a UPS). I have it set up to send me alerts if power draw increases beyond a certain threshold. I’ve tested it and wireguard is measurable (yay) but so are DDOS attacks. If I get that alert, I can choose to turn off that plug and take my whole network offline until I get home and can sort that out.
Gotten a few false positives over the years but mostly that is just texting my partner to ask what they are doing.
Care to share what outlet you had success with? I’m comfortable with Home Assistant and ZigBee/Z-Wave. Something this critical probably shouldn’t be wireless, but I digress. I’m also interested in what software you’re using for monitoring and alerts (if you’re willing to share). Cheers!
I just use a pretty generic z-wave plug and home assistant. In the past I did more complex setups that actually determine what process is spiking and so forth. But eventually realized that “this is doing a lot of compute…” is a catch all for a LOT of potential issues.
And I guess I don’t understand what you mean by “shouldn’t be wireless”. It is inherently going to be wireless because you will be on your phone on the other side of the planet. If you genuinely suspect you will be vulnerable to attacks of this scale then you… probably have other things to worry about.
But as a safety blanket?
Gotcha. A ZigBee/Z-wave plug was the first thing that came to mind. I’ll probably go the same route. I was merely saying that wireless-anything is less dependable than wired. But I don’t even know if wired smart plugs exist. I use wireless sensors around my home and I’ve never had an issue with dependability. I definitely wasn’t considering Z-wave as a local attack vector. I was just brainstorming some way to avoid a wireless solution for something where dependability is paramount.
Aren’t you just DoSing yourself at that point?
Well damn that’s clever. I will have to try that.
Or you could trigger automation that turns it off for hours, then turns it back on. That way you could get around the need to physically turn it on, in case everyone is away.
With my firewall disabled a lot of my internal network (including home assistant) will fall over sooner than later.
But that is also a recipe for mass stress. Because I know “something happened”. And now I know “in six hours, I need to check in and make sure that ‘something’ is still not happening”. Which is extra shitty if I got the notification late evening local time.
I have friends/neighbors that I trust to swing by and push a button in the event I need to bring it back up before I get home. But if I have reached the point of “it is possible my wireguard credentials were compromised?” then I really don’t need to be able to download the next episode of ATLA NOW.