I like to spin up a public facing server and run tcpdump

I usually just follow this

I do worry about putting up public servers that other people might rely on because there's something I might not realize making it vulnerable.

So far I have pubkey root login only on the VPSs I'm messing around with, but my ol' reliable private key from 6 years ago might be beginning to fall behind on encryption standards.

Use gnome powder to shrink, go behind the counter, kick his ass and get your money back.

Good on you learning new skills.

This is why other sysadmins and cybetsecurity exist. Be nice to them.

This is like browsing /c/selfhosted as everyone portforwards every experimental piece of garbage across their router...

Weird. My last setup had a NAT with a few VMs hosting a few different services. For example, Jellyfin, a web server, and novnc/vm. That turned out perfectly fine and it was exposed to the web. You must have had a vulnerable version of whatever web host you were using, or maybe if you had SSH open without rate limits.

sudo sudoku

Yeah, about this; any ssh server that can be run as user and doesn't do shenanigans like switching user?

I've been quite stupid with this but never really had issues. Ever since I changed the open ssh port from 22 to something else, my server is basically ignored by botnets. These days I obviously also have some other tricks like fail2ban, but it was funny how effective that was.