Did anyone paranoid like me research security implications of running Tailscale/Headscale or similiar?

Right now I’m self-hosting headscale controller in my LAN and expose it to public Internet. I’m thinking about moving it to a VPS, but I’m a little paranoid about exposing the software that controls connectivity between my and family machines to a third party, be it official Tailscale controller or VPS provider where I run Headscale.

Currently I think that even in the worst case of someone compromising my Headscale instance it should still be fine as long as all of the machines are properly firewalled and all of the exposed apps and services are behind authentication. I run everything behind Authentik and only keys for SSH access. I will certainly add some network monitoring to all of that.

Any opions and suggestions on this matter are welcome.

  • GetAwayWithThis@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    I had the same dilemma. It comes down to this in my opinion:

    • Do you trust yourself and your current networking gear, software, security setup enough to host this yourself at home?
    • Do you trust your vps providers tech stack, ethics, privacy policy etc. AND your own ability to secure it to host it on a vps?
    • Do you trust Tailscale the company who’s in the business of “zero trust vpn” solutions to use their product?

    I didn’t check if they were audited and if so how, but I went with the free Tailscale option, the most comfortable option for me now. Might change once I get more competent at the subject.