Only public facing ports, maybe your openvpn login. But that means you are already firewalled up and your attack surface is tiny, good 👍

I recommend fail2ban to stop the automated attacks that are the background noise of the internet. It will set your firewall to block certain ip’s for a while, especially ports 21/22 are getting hammered with dictionary login attempts. And port 80 and 8080 for example get constantly version checked to see if you are vulnerable with an old apache, old dokuwiki etc, so don’t expose more than you need to and maybe learn about ssh tunnels and close a few.

I once installed ossim in a small network with a server and it showed me it is war out there, scripts flying everywhere.

Exactly, my television is an ips lcd with an arm based programmable microcomputer with software that translates input signals for the display, LED backlighting and an internal power supply. Although, I wouldn’t be able to repair it, there are no spare parts.

Every washing machine has an embedded system that controls the washing cycle and needed programming for that. That’s not common knowledge and they rather put functionality in their marketing than function.

We need a right to repair and common instructions how to fix things, maybe that helps dissolving the magic.

I think this is one step further, that technology has become so abstract and complex that people who focus on different crafts and careers are using magical black boxes. It blows my mind how my neighbour goes through life without any concept of what a phone app is. He just uses functionality and memorized the associated logo. I’m an engineering wizard to him.