Self-Hosted WAF on a $5 VPS: My Budget Security Setup
The $5 Challenge Can you run a production-grade WAF on the cheapest VPS available? I tested it on a $5/month VPS (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB SSD) from a major provider. The goal: protect a Node.js blog and a static site without exceeding the budget. ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐ │ $5 VPS (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM) │ │ │ │ ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │ │ │ SafeLine │ │ Node.js │ │ │ │ WAF │ │ Blog App │ │ │ │ ~500 MB │ │ ~300 MB │ │ │ └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌────┴──────────────┴──┐ │ │
🎯 Vulnerability: Web Security Vulnerability
💡 Defense Fix: Implement strict input validation, contextual output encoding, and enforce least-privilege authorization controls.