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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How do we know if there aren't a bunch of more undetected backdoors? (lemdro.id)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have been thinking about self-hosting my personal photos on my linux server. After the recent backdoor was detected I'm more hesitant to do so especially because i'm no security expert and don't have the time and knowledge to audit my server. All I've done so far is disabling password logins and changing the ssh port. I'm wondering if there are more backdoors and if new ones are made I can't respond in time. Appreciate your thoughts on this for an ordinary user.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Have been for a long time. You just have to use the DNS validation. But you should do that (and it's easy) if you want to manage "internal" domains anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh, yeah, idk. Giving API access to a system to modify DNS is too risky. Or is there some provider you recommend with a granular API that only gives the keys permission to modify TXT and .well-known (eg so it can't change SPF TXT records or, of course, any A records, etc)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What you can (and absolutely should) do is DNS delegation. On your main domain you delegate the _acme-challenge. subdomains with NS records to your DNS server that will do cert generation (and cert generation only). You probably want to run Bind there (since it has decent and fast remote access for changing records and other existing solutions). You can still split it with separate keys into different zones (I would suggest one key per certificate, and splitting certificates by where/how they will be used).

You don't even need to allow remote access beyond the DNS responses if you don't want to, and that server doesn't have anything to do with anything else in your infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ok, so no API at all. Its the internal DNS server itself that runs certbot and makes the changes locally?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yes, that's one option. Then you only have to distribute the certificates and keys.

Or you allow remote access to that DNS server (Bind has a secure protocol for this), do the challenge requests and cert generation on some other machine. Depends on what is more convenient for you (the latter is better if you have lots of machines/certs).

Worst case if someone compromises that DNS server they can only generate certificates but not change your actual valuable records because these are not delegated there.