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.
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 :)
You mentioned a book though… Now i’m curious ;-)
https://www.amazon.com/Demystifying-Cryptography-OpenSSL-3-0-techniques/dp/1800560346
It’s really a good book :) And the last part is all about a mini-ca for your homelab !
However, don’t use the ED448/ED25519 algorithm based certificates for TLS as mentioned in the example… They are still not supported by any browser !
If you can support the author, please do ! If you’re on a budget, it’s really easy to find in the piracy corner.