Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Remotely and Securely Controlling Other Computers from Your Mac for Administrative or Support Purposes

Date: January 13, 2006
Time: 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Code: M264
Speaker: Aaron Adams

The Macintosh platform provides tremendous flexibility when it comes to controlling other machines remotely, whether they be Mac, Windows, or another platform. An array of free tools is available to anyone wishing to use a remote machine as if they were sitting at the console of that far away box. Those tools include VNC, Apple Remote Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, RDC Launcher, X11, and RDesktop. Each of these connection methods is insecure out of the box, so complimentary layers of security in the form of SSH tunnels and VPNs can be established to protect what would otherwise be wide open transmissions of possibly sensitive data.

Attendees Will Learn:

• Microsoft Remote Desktop usage and limitations
• Using RDC Launcher to overcome limitations of Microsoft RDC
• Using RDesktop from the command line to establish multiple RDC connections to Windows machines
• Creating simple executable shell scripts to simplify RDesktop usage
• Implementation of osxVNC server
• Using Apple’s bundled Remote Desktop as a VNC server
• Connecting to a VNC-enabled machine with Chicken of the VNC
• Connecting to a VNC-enabled machine with Apple Remote Desktop
• Using VNC with Windows machines that do not support RDC
• Running applications locally from an X11 server
• Establishing a simple VPN using IPSecuritas or another VPN client to encrypt remote control protocol transmissions
• Establishing SSH tunnels to encrypt the transmissions of any of these remote control protocols

Anyone with a need to control a machine remotely for administrative or support purposes, and anyone who currently does so and needs to know how to secure those connections should attend.