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VPN/SSH Tunneling software

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Josh:
I am looking for a VPN or SSH Tunnel software that I can use to secure my remote desktop session (as suggested by f0dder in the remote control thread). Does anyone have any that they particularly prefer?

f0dder:
VPN sorta requires custom hardware - or perhaps a BSD (or linux) box. Or perhaps some (commercial?) windows (server?) software. We got a CISCO PIX 501 at work, which works pretty well. Not exactly cheap, but the VPN on it is easy to set up and works very well (can't say I'm too happy about the cisco vpn client though, it causes some hiccups with vmware networking every now and then - still researching into that one).

As for SSH tunnelling, I haven't gotten around to playing with it yet :(. I think the nice PuTTY software can handle it on the client side, and at the serverside I'd recommend some bsd/linux/unix box running OpenSSH. Something that seems a bit problematic to me in the case of RDP is that the default client won't let you specify a port number to connect to... so you'll only be able to access one machine behind the SSH wall, unless you manually remap the tunnel...

Josh:
In RDP, you can use a :PORTNUMBER at the end of the hostname/ip to connect to a specific port :) so HOSTNAME:PORT

Also, dont they have VPN software so you can run a VPN server on a windows pc? I have a spare pc, and once its up and running again, I plan to install ubuntu to run as a firewall and a few various other tasks (plus a general workstation for my wife to use).

f0dder:
Ah great, didn't know that! Then it should be quite possible to access multiple internal RDP machines through a single server/IP. I'd have to do some research to figure out how to do it, though - hardware assisted VPN is so easy ;)

Rover:
Josh,

If you are accessing a Linux box from windows, you must use PuTTY.   :)

Once you are using (and Loving) PuTTY, you can looking in the Connection Settings, under SSH at the Tunnels section.  From there you can Turn on X Windows forwarding.  You can also tunnel ports.

For example:  I have a server that can SSH to via port 22.  For our discussion, that is the only open port in the firewall.  I want to use VNC on port 5901, so I add the following to my session:
Source Port: 5901
Desitnation: remote.server.ip:5901
 - remote.server.ip is either the ip address or hostname form the REMOTE server's perspective.
And click the Add button.

Once I SSH to my remote server using my username/password or Pub Key, I can connect to my VNCServer using the tunnel.  I fireup VNCviewer and browse to the tunneled address:
127.0.0.1:5901

Notice that to my vncviewer, it looks like I should be connecting back to my local PC, using the loop-back address.  But PuTTY is listening on port 5901 and taking my connection through the tunnel to the remote server. 

Result, I end up using the VNC Desktop on my remote box without exposing port 5901 to the outside world.

Yea for SSH Tunnels  :Thmbsup:

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