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Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
On of my clients needs to be able to control an office computer (windows) remotely. There’s some sensitive stuff in there, so it’ll need to be super secure.
I was thinking a VPN router with VNC might do the trick, but I seem to recall some vulnerabilities.
Recommendations anyone?
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
Microsoft Remote Desktop or Hamachi? I’ve only used Remote Desktop on my Mac to access an XP machine – not sure of its security though.
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
There is a tutorial here but it is about macs. Maybe it’ll give you some ideas.
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#4 2007-03-29 16:50:32
- els
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- Registered: 2004-06-06
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
I’ve been using VPN and remote desktop to access my office XP Pro computer from my XP desktop at home for a while now. Our system administrator said it was OK so I never worried about security ;) The only problem I still have is getting the same thing to work from my ubuntu laptop…
Wikipedia elaborates on security.
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
Thanks guys.
Still deciding whether to have my client spring for a VPN router and follow Els’ approach or whether to sign them up for a free “logMeIn” account.
Advantages/Disadvantages?
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
mrdale wrote:
Still deciding whether to have my client spring for a VPN router…
A cheap VPN router solution is a Linksys WRT54G and install OpenWRT on it.
The trick is being able to find a WRT54G with enough internal memory, since Linksys has been shipping the latest routers with less than adequate Flash.
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
The WRT54GL is identical to the WRT54G but is guaranteed to run Linux (and therefore OpenWRT). Saves you the trouble of comparing serial numbers ;)
Last edited by ruud (2007-03-29 18:41:09)
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Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
sshd (use cygwin on windows) + vnc (listening on localhost only) + ssh-tunelling is about as secure as it gets. Especially if you restrict sshd to public-key authentication only.
VPN might be ok, too, though I’d say it could be less secure for certain aspects (like vnc being accessible in the whole LAN; or having a completely routed or worse bridged network might be less secure if the connecting client PCs have worms etc.). Though looking at it solely from a “middle-man”/internet perspective they would be equally secure.
(update: for ubuntu check out x11vnc, it’s fiddly to find out the right parameters etc., but once it’s running it’s pretty solid. It even undertands the more aggressive, lossy compression used by tightvnc which is nice over slow links).
Last edited by Sencer (2007-03-29 19:03:35)
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#9 2007-03-29 21:04:14
- els
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- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: Secure remote windowing suggestions (vnc, got to my pc, etc)
Sencer wrote:
(update: for ubuntu check out x11vnc, it’s fiddly to find out the right parameters etc., but once it’s running it’s pretty solid. It even undertands the more aggressive, lossy compression used by tightvnc which is nice over slow links).
Thanks! I’ll look into it.
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