Once SSH is installed, you could connect to a machine called 'snoopy' from elsewhere simply by running the SSH client: All traffic is encrypted between the two machines using public key encryption techniques, making it really very difficult for anyone else to spy on it. You can get RPMs at - for other distributions see the SSH FAQ.īasic UseSSH normally just provides you with a 'Secure SHell' - i.e. I downloaded the source versions, built, and installed them, and this did almost everything, including the generation of a key for my machine. For my Linux machine I found two RPMs called ssh-clients and ssh-server.
#Vnc vs ssh vs telnet how to
InstallationWe won't go into details here about how to install SSH. Frank Stajano has contributed a page which describes how he uses a free Windows SSH client to connect to a Unix server. The rest of this document refers to the Unix world, though the techniques will be relevant for other systems. There are links at the bottom of this page to point you in the right direction for all of these things. If you're using Java, check out the modified Java viewer created by Mindbright Technology. Clients are also available for Windows, Macs, and other machines, but if you want servers on these platforms you may need to go for a commercial version, or to route your connection via a Unix machine (see later).
If you are using Unix, this is pretty easy SSH clients and servers are freely available for Unix. We therefore recommend that if security is important to you, you 'tunnel' the VNC protocol through some more secure channel such as SSH. Once you are connected, however, traffic between the viewer and the server is unencrypted, and could be snooped by someone with access to the intervening network.
This is reasonably secure the password is not sent over the network. Making VNC more secure using SSHVNC uses a random challenge-response system to provide the basic authentication that allows you to connect to a VNC server.