Secure Your Homelab in Minutes with SafeLine WAF

#websecuriyt #cybersecurity #waf #safeline

After setting up fail2ban to secure SSH access in my homelab, I quickly realized my web services were still exposed to more advanced threats. That’s when I discovered SafeLine WAF, a self-hosted Web Application Firewall that has been a total game-changer for my setup.

Unlike traditional rule-based firewalls, SafeLine doesn’t just block patterns — it actually analyzes what’s happening in your traffic. After running it for several months across multiple apps, I can confidently say it’s now a critical part of my security stack.

What is SafeLine WAF?

SafeLine is an open-source, self-hosted WAF developed by Chaitin Tech. Instead of relying solely on predefined signatures, it takes a smarter approach by analyzing request semantics.

Some quick facts:

19.3K+ GitHub stars
Protects 1M+ websites worldwide
Perfect for homelabs

How it works in your homelab:

Acts as a reverse proxy, routing all traffic through SafeLine
Inspects each request before it reaches your apps
Blocks malicious payloads instantly
Lets safe traffic through
Continuously learns and improves detection

Attacks SafeLine Helps Prevent

SafeLine is effective against a variety of attacks, including:

SQL Injection
XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
Remote Code Execution (RCE)
Path Traversal
HTTP Flood attacks
Bot scraping
Even some zero-days

Why I Picked SafeLine Over Alternatives

I tested Cloudflare Free WAF and ModSecurity before switching to SafeLine. Here’s a quick comparison:

Solution	Detection Rate	False Positives	Accuracy
SafeLine (Balanced)	71.65%	0.07%	99.45%
SafeLine (Strict)	76.17%	0.22%	99.38%
ModSecurity L1	69.74%	17.58%	82.20%
Cloudflare Free	10.70%	0.07%	98.40%

Higher accuracy than ModSecurity

Fewer false positives than anything I’ve tried

Full control vs. Cloudflare’s limitations

Setting Up SafeLine in a Homelab

Setup is surprisingly simple. Here’s a quick test install:

# One-line install with English interface
bash -c "$(curl -fsSLk https://waf.chaitin.com/release/latest/manager.sh)" -- --en

For production environments, I recommend Docker Compose:

# Create SafeLine directory
sudo mkdir -p /data/safeline && cd /data/safeline

# Download compose file
sudo wget https://waf.chaitin.com/release/latest/compose.yaml

# Create env file
sudo tee .env << 'EOF'
SAFELINE_DIR=/data/safeline
IMAGE_TAG=latest
MGT_PORT=9443
POSTGRES_PASSWORD={postgres-password}
SUBNET_PREFIX=172.22.222
IMAGE_PREFIX=chaitin
ARCH_SUFFIX=
EOF

# Launch SafeLine
sudo docker compose up -d