Mind that I am very noob into self-hosting, reverse proxies and the like

When I saw that Caddy automatically handled the HTTPS thingies I was like “this is my moment then to go into self-hosting”. Caddy seemed so simple.

Turns out… I am suddenly discovering that the connection between the caddy machine and the Home Assistant machine (both in the local network) is non-encrypted. So if another appliance in my local network went rogue… bum, all my info gets leaked… right?

This might sound weird because it might actually be super-duper complicated but… how come in 2025 we still don’t auto-encrypt local comms?

Please be kind. Lot’s of love. Hopefully I’ll dig my way to self-hosting wisdom.

  • N0x0n@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    16 hours ago

    Or simply create your rootCA, IntermediateCA, keys and certifictes with openSSL.

    Neither of those are begginer friendly but openSSL is probably a bit easier to get started. There’s a nice book with openSSL (if you are interested I migh look how it’s called) and the last chapter is all about how to create your mini-CA and everthing else to serve your proxy with valid certificates for your homelab.

    • Johannes Jacobs@lemmy.jhjacobs.nlEnglish
      2·
      16 hours ago

      The reason i chose Step CA over openSSL is because with step CA you can automate certificate renewal without any manual intervention. I don’t know how that would work with openSSL except some heavy scripting?

      • N0x0n@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        15 hours ago

        Yeah thats correct !

        I Wouldn’t say heavy though (maybe I see it that way because I got a bit better with bash and the like :p) because you can make use of CRL to revoke your certificates and renew them very easily with your intermediate and ready to use config files.

        But yeah, there isn’t any automated way to manage certificates like Smallstep does :)