Getting the router to actually assign an IP address to the server

You would typically want to use static ip addresses for servers (because if you use DHCP the IP is gonna change sooner or later, and it’s gonna be a pain in the butt).

IIRC dnsmasq is configured to assign IPs from .100 upwards (unless you changed that), so you can use any of the IPs up to .99 without issue (you can also assign a DNS name to the IP, of course).

all requests’ IP addresses are set to the router’s IP address (192.168.3.1), so I am unable to use proper rate limiting and especially fail2ban.

Sounds like you are using masquerade and need DNAT instead. No idea how to configure that in openwrt - sorry.

I’m not a dev of one of those tools but I know several maintainers and developers that’s why I’m a bit sensitive there!

I get it and I appreciate your sentiment.

I also understand that you are not accusing me of disrespect towards FOSS devs, but let me nonetheless stress that “dumb implementation decision” is not the same as “dumb developer”, and that open/frank discussion is as important for the FOSS ecosystem as the effort put in by devs (meaning both are essential, and that is without subtracting from the fact that developing things takes much more effort than talking about them).

I’m not aware of a mechanism to read (unencrypted or not) files on a host without a preceding incident. How else could your files be acessed? I don’t understand how I might have this backwards.

That’s not how you should approach security! :)

You should not think of security in the all-or-nothing terms of avoiding your system getting breached.

You should think of it in terms of reducing the probability of a breach happening in a given time frame, and minimizing the damage caused by such a breach.

The question to ask is “what measures will minimize the sum total of <cost of security> plus <damage from breaches>?” and the philosophy to adopt is defense in deep. (*).

Fortifying a perimeter and assuming everything is safe inside it is the kind of approach that leads to hyper-secured and virus-ridden corporate LANs (if applied to contrasting drug trafficking, would lead to a country where the only anti-drug measures were border checks).

(*) note that a breach doesn’t need to be an hacker breaking in your computer or a thug pointing a gun at your head, it can be just you losing a USB key where you backed up some of your files, or you me leaving my PC unlocked because I have to hurry to the hospital

PS: this might be my anti-corporate bias speaking, but I’d say the reason the “safe perimeter” idea is so widespread is that tools that promise to magically make everything secure are much easier to sell than education and good practices.

Cybersecurity works inherently with risk scenarios. Your comparison is flawed because you state that there is an absolute security hygiene standard.

First of all it’s risk analysis :) On top of identifying threats (which I assume is what you mean by “scenarios”), one must assess the likelyhood of those threats and what potential impact they have.

Risk analysis, however is not the core of cybersecurity: that’s just the part security consultants are tasked with (and, consequently, the part pros talk more about, and newbies fill their mouths with).

The core of cybersecurity (and of security in general) is striking a balance between cost and benefit, which is an inherently an executive decision (you’ll hear “between usability and security” - that’s just what people say when they want to downplay “cost” to push others to move towards “security”).

That is exactly like managing your health. You I could get a comprehensive health checkup every couple months: that would possibly catch a cancer in its early stages (here’s your “risk scenario”) and wouldn’t have serious health repercussions, but I don’t because it’s not worth the money/time/hassle (cost-benefit analysis).

Exactly like one does with health, there are security measures you adopt just because you are sure they have a benefit (just that it exists) their cost is very reasonable (ie. low in absolute terms and specifically compared to how much a full risk analysis would cost): did you do a full risk analysis before deciding your PC should have a password? Before setting up a screensaver that locks your screen?

There are two common ways to implement token management. The most common one I am aware of is actually the text based one.

Yeah, the two I’ve my OP seems to point

Even a lot of cloud services save passwords as environment variables after a vault got unlocked via IAM.

Environment variables have their attack surface, which is way smaller than that of a text file stored in your home directory.

That’s because the risk assessment is: If a perpetrator has access to these files the whole system is already corrupted - any encryption that gets decrypted locally is therefore also compromised.

I’m not sure what “the whole system” refers to in “If a perpetrator has access to these files the whole system is already corrupted”.

If the system is my PC, then the reasoning is backwards: the secrets get compromised if (they are not secured and) my PC is breached, not the other way round. On top of that, while basically a lot of breaches may expose the files in your home directory (say, a website gaining read access through your browser, or you accidentally starting a badly written/configured webserver, or you disposing of your old drive, or your PC being stolen, or… many others), a lot fewer compromise properly kept secrets (say, password-protected ssh keys).

If the system is my Codeberg account, then that’s the whole reason I should secure my secrets. (Admittedly, neither of these make much sense, but I don’t know what else the system could be).

Besides that, I must say “who cares? we’re fucked anyway” is quite the lazy threat assessment :D

The second approach is to implement the OS level secret manager and what you’re implicitly asking for from my understanding.

There are a lots of secrets management tools that have little to do with the OS (I’d even say most of them are): bitwarden and all other password managers, ssh keys and ssh-agent, sops, etc.

While I agree that this would be the “cleaner” solution it’s also destroying cross platform compatibility or increasing maintenance load linear to the amount of platforms used, with a huge jump for the second one: I now need a test pipeline with an OS different than what I’m using.

I don’t get the point… It would seem you are trying to tell me that secure tools are impossible to build (when you yourself have talked of “vaults that get unlocked via IAM”) or that I should just use insecure tools (which… is my own decision to make)?

If you took offense because I called those forjego CLIs “dumb” I do apologize (are you the dev of one of those?).

The alternative would require the user to enter a decryption password on every system start, like some wallets do, which is a bit of a hassle.

The downside is that you need to type a password - the upside is that you don’t need to type any extra password, since you are already unlocking whatever wallet you are using anyway (unless you don’t use one - which is a whole different problem on its own).

If at least there was “one obvious way of doing this” across platforms,

For wallets I found https://github.com/hrantzsch/keychain/, but TBH I don’t think OS password managers would be the way to go here (at least not if you want to support CI systems and building in containers). Something based on age would be far more flexible, and could leverage existing ssh keys (which I’m sure some people store with no password protection - which, again, is a whole different problem on its own).

Scenario? Not keeping your secrets in plain text is just good hygiene.

Do you need a usage scenario where not showering for a week would be a serious concern for you to shower more often than that? You wash because you dislike feeling dirty and because you know that proper hygiene makes you more resilient towards whatever health hazard you might be exposed to… it’s the same for securing your secrets :)

I’m not sure I understand your question… is that a convoluted way to say they all do plaintext?

Some game engines are real, others are… unreal

TLDR: Protesting or resisting privately inside your house does not lead to social change and is not the most rational way of protecting yourself if you feel threatened by your government.

Self-hosting is not “resistance”: at most, it’s prepping for nerds, with computers instead of guns.

Self-hosting is not even a rational/efficient way of making a statement. If that’s what you want, it’s far more efficient to follow the established tradition of declaring you are moving to Canada and not following up with actual actions.

Don’t get me wrong: I can relate to the nerdy way of coping with the ugliness around us (I say “us”, but thankfully I don’t live in the US), but - the way I see it - it’s that your society that needs change, and self hosting won’t help with that.

Frankly, the shit you US people are putting up with is unreal.

It has always been (US police forces kill far more people than the overall homicide rate in Europe - read that again and pause a second to think about it this isn’t true - see comments below), and it’s just getting worse.

If you feel threatened you can essentially respond by fighting, fleeing, or cowering.

If you wanna FIGHT (this is what “resistance” is about), try to use whatever power you have and apply your energies to bring actual change. If you don’t feel comfortable acting outdoors, this could include lending your nerd skills to protesters or (nonviolent) resistance groups. Heck, even being a keyboard warrior is more useful to changing society than being a hobbyist sysadmin.

If you wanna FLEE, just leave the country. Honestly, there are better places to live than the US, and (if you have or plan to have any) better places to raise your children.

If you wanna COWER, then be a prepper or a self-hoster or whatever, but be aware that, while misrepresenting your reaction as “resistance” may make you feel more heroic than you are, spreading the misrepresentation can also lead others to cower instead of fighting. Is that what you want?