Secure VPS

B.B.S. — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:31:13 +0000

Hello friends,

I finally finished up a long running project for me that I call secure vps.

Most VPS servers ship with insecure default settings.

Open SSH access, weak configurations, missing firewall rules, and no protection against brute-force attacks.

Secure VPS fixes this automatically.

With a single command, your server is hardened using industry best practices and CIS security recommendations.
No manual configuration. No complicated scripts. No risk of locking yourself out.

What Secure VPS does

Secure VPS automatically secures your system by:

• Hardening SSH (disable root login, enforce key authentication)
• Configuring a firewall with safe defaults
• Installing and configuring Fail2ban to block attackers
• Applying kernel security protections (sysctl hardening)
• Enabling automatic security updates
• Detecting and supporting multiple Linux distributions

All changes are applied safely with backups and validation.

Compliance reporting

Secure VPS maps security checks to CIS Benchmarks, providing a clear report of your server’s security posture.

You get:

• Human-readable compliance reports
• JSON output for automation pipelines
• Security scoring and checklist output

Perfect for DevOps workflows and infrastructure automation.

Wide Linux support

Debian Family (uses apt, UFW, unattended-upgrades)

Ubuntu 20.04 or newer
Debian 11 or newer (including 13)
Linux Mint 20 or newer

RHEL Family (uses dnf/yum, iptables, dnf-automatic)

RHEL 8 or newer (including 10)
AlmaLinux 8 or newer (including 10)
Rocky Linux 8 or newer (including 10)
CentOS Stream 8 or newer (including 10)
Amazon Linux 2023 or newer (Only container tested)
Oracle Linux 8 or newer
Fedora 38 or newer

SUSE Family (uses zypper, firewalld, systemd timer)

openSUSE Leap 15 or newer (including 16)
openSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling release)
SLES 15 or newer

If your OS isn't in this list, the tool will tell you and exit safely — it won't touch anything.

Designed simplicity - for all engineers across the board!

Secure VPS ships as a single static binary.

No dependencies. No installation complexity.

Simply download and run:
secure-vps apply

Perfect for:

• VPS deployments
• cloud-init provisioning
• CI/CD pipelines
• infrastructure automation

Who this is for

Secure VPS is ideal for:

Software engineers running VPS servers
Indie hackers launching projects
DevOps engineers automating infrastructure
Anyone who wants a secure server without manual hardening
Any data engineer that just want to secure the server easily

Secure VPS gives you safe, automated server hardening in one command.

You can get it here

Email-to-Webhook Gateway in Go - Updated

B.B.S. — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:24:37 +0000

I just open-sourced SMTPHook — a self-hosted email ingestion service written in Go. If you've ever wanted to turn incoming emails into structured webhook events (e.g. to ping a pager, log alerts, trigger bots, etc.), this tool is for you. If it works for you consider sponsor me with a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/voidwatch

What It Does

SMTPHook is a modular platform that:

✅ Accepts SMTP emails via Mailpit

✅ Parses raw emails into structured JSON

✅ Forwards the payload to your webhook endpoint

✅ Includes retry logic, logging, health checks

✅ Supports full local testing with swaks

Example Use Cases

Alerting: Email → Webhook → PagerDuty / Discord / Slack
Archiving: Email → JSON → S3 / DB / Elasticsearch
Automation: Email triggers CI/CD, bots, or workflows
Dev Testing: No need to poll real mailboxes anymore

⚡ Quick Start

git clone git@github.com:voidwatch/SMTPHook-Golang.git
cd SMTPHook-Golang
chmod +x setup-parser.sh
./setup-parser.sh

Then send a test email (if you set up the test env with setup.sh:

swaks --to test@example.com --server localhost:1025 < email.txt

And receive it on your webhook.

🛠 Technologies Used

Go (all components)
Mailpit for dev SMTP
Podman + Compose
A dash of Curl and a bit of swaks

🔗 GitHub

📡 Check out SMTPHook on GitHub →

I’d love your feedback, contributions, or ideas. If you find this useful and want to support the project, stars or donations are always welcome!

🙏 Support & Contributions

If you're an indie devops engineer, or just love hacking with Go and automation, I’d love your thoughts.

DM me or check the repo for sponsor links.
https://buymeacoffee.com/voidwatch

Forem: B.B.S.