To mitigate the effort to maintain my personal server, I am considering to only expose ssh port to the outside and use its socks proxy to reach other services. is Portknocking enough to reduce surface of attack to the minimum?
In your SSH config, you should disallow root login and password authentication.
It is more secure than these tommyknockers :-) but you can do that additionally, if you feel like it.
Why disallow root login? I always need root when I connect, and stealing the password by aliasing sudo/doas is trivial. It seems to me it would just make life harder for no benefit.
Because then:
- you also need to know the correct username
- audits and logging shows which user used sudo to gain root access
- you also need to know the correct username
Use a secure password or key. Security by obscurity is no security.
- audits and logging shows which user used sudo to gain root access
That is not the point that was made. Once access to sudo or root you already have lost.
