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thesabear d5f37b5787 docs: add security/hardening deep-dive write-ups
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DNS Naming Model

Two zones, deliberately never conflated

Internal DNS is authoritative for two zones that mirror each other structurally but serve different traffic:

Zone Serves Enforcement
Browser-facing zone Users/browsers, via the user-facing reverse proxy Mutual TLS + SSO enforced at the edge
Service-to-service zone App-to-app traffic (webhooks, API integrations), via the internal reverse proxy Trusted-IP allowlist, no mTLS

Most apps get one hostname per zone, resolving to a different front door depending on who's asking — a browser gets the mTLS-enforced path, another service gets the lighter-weight internal path. The two zones aren't perfectly identical at any given moment; a handful of apps exist in only one zone rather than both, which is expected — not every stack needs both zones, driven by actual need rather than blanket symmetry.

The public exception

One app is a deliberate exception to the whole two-zone model: it's genuinely public-facing, routed directly through the edge firewall's own reverse-proxy package, and has zero presence in either internal zone. Apps meant for the public internet skip the internal DNS model entirely rather than getting a third, redundant record.

Caught during a later audit

A later documentation audit caught real drift from what had been assumed: an older note claimed an external DNS forwarder (a third-party provider) was configured for anything outside the two internal zones. Live verification found no such forwarder actually configured — unresolved queries forward to the edge firewall and a couple of standard public resolvers instead, and internal clients are blocked from using any other resolver directly. The takeaway kept from that audit: documentation drift is caught by checking live state, not by assuming a prior note was still accurate.


Related stacks: stacks/platform/caddy/, stacks/platform/caddy-internal/