TCB13 , 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

@foremanguy92_ ,

Step 1: get a cheap VPS, or even a free one (https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/)

Step 2: If you've a static IP at home great, if you don't get a dynamic DNS from https://freedns.afraid.org/ or https://www.duckdns.org/

Step 3: Install nginx on the VPS and configure it as reverse proxy to your home address. Something like this:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.org; # your real domain name you want people to use to access your website
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://home-dynamic-dns.freeprovider... # replace with your home server IP or Dynamic DNS.
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }
}

Step 4: Point your A record of example.org to your VPS.

Step 5: there's a potential security issue with this option: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_realip_module.html#set_real_ip_from and to get around this you can do the following on the home server nginx config:

http {
(...)
        real_ip_header    X-Real-IP;
        set_real_ip_from  x.x.x.x; # Replace with the VPS IP address.
}

This will make sure only the VPS is allowed to override the real IP of the client.

Step 6: Once your setup works you may increase your security by using SSL / disabling plain HTTP setup letsencrypt in both servers to get valid SSL certificates for real domain and the dynamic DNS one.

Proceed to disable plain text / HTTP traffic. To do this simply remove the entire server { listen 80 section on both servers. You should replace them with server { listen 443 ssl; so it listens only for HTTPs traffic.

Step 7: set your home router to allow incoming traffic in port 443 and forward it into the home server;

Step 8: set the home server's firewall to only accept traffic coming from outside the LAN subnet on port 443 and if it comes from the VPS IP. Drop everything else.

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Another alternative to this it to setup a Wireguard tunnel between your home server and the VPS and have the reverse proxy send the traffic through that tunnel (change proxy_pass to the IP of the home server inside the tunnel like proxy_pass http://10.0.0.2). This has two advantages: 1) you don't need to setup SSL at your home server as all the traffic will flow encrypted over the tunnel and 2) will not require to open a local port for incoming traffic on the home network... however it also has two drawbacks: you'll need a better VPS because WG requires extra processing power and 2) your home server will have to keep the tunnel connected and working however it will fail. Frankly I wouldn't bother to setup the tunnel as your home server will only accept traffic from the VPS IP so you won't gain much there in terms of security.