Google points out that the goal of the beta release is to “demonstrate the core Chrome Remoting technology and get feedback from users”. The extension allows users to share their computer for remote access, or get access to another computer with a one-time authentication code.

The extension can only be installed if the user is logged into a Google account. Once that is done it is necessary to give the extension additional privileges before it can be used to create a one-time authentication code or to access another machine by entering a code into the browser interface.

Remote desktop is a cross-platform application which means that remote connections to clients that run other operating systems work. You could for instance connect from your Windows PC to a Linux tablet, or from a Macbook running Chrome to a Linux distribution.

When I tried to use Chrome Remote Desktop on my main Windows PC and my Acer netbook, I could not create authorization codes. Chrome always displayed “Your Chrome Remote Desktop session has ended” with no option available but to click OK to go back to the start screen.

I discovered that Chrome Remote Desktop requires access to TCP port 443 and 5222. A support page has been created for users who encounter errors using the remote desktop functionality.

The user with the authorization code gets full access to the other user’s computer system including access to applications, emails, files, documents and the history.

Chrome users can download and install Chrome Remote Desktop, a 19+ Megabyte download from the official Chrome Web Store. Since it is a beta release it is advised not to install the extension in a productive environment. You can use other applications like Teamviewer to connect to other systems remotely. (Thanks Venkat)

The remote desktop protocol drives Remote Desktop Services through Port 3389 by default. Any Remote Desktop connections are made through Port 3389. This is the case for every user reading this unless you have already changed the port. Basically, this means that this port is an easy target. By changing the RDP port, security is enhanced because bots and kiddies are designed to target RDP Port 3389. Change the port!

For this to be truly effective, implement a strong account lockout policy. This defends against the use of RDP protocol to obtain the administrator password. If the password is attainable due to the absence of an account lockout policy, then the RDP Port can be found regardless of what it has been changed to.

Changing the default RDP port is achieved through a simple registry hack. Another method is to change the RDP port with a third-party utility. Always set a restore point before making changes to the registry.

The Registry Hack

Run regedit from the start menu to open the Registry Editor. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Control, Terminal Server, WinStations and RDP_Tcp. Find the PortNumber dword and right-click.

Select Modify. Alter the base to Decimal and enter the new port number with a value between 1025 and 65535, as long as the port is not in use. Click OK.

The Software Hack

The Microsoft Fix It Wizard can be used to change the RDP Port. It is available through the Microsoft website. Here is the download link: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9759545. Click this link and download the free utility. Click Next to initiate the Wizard. A PortNumber screen will be presented. Enter the value of an unused port that you want to use as the new RDP Port. Again, the value must be between 1025 and 65535. Click Next and you are done.

Reboot the system to put the changes into effect.
The next time you connect to your system with RDP you are going to have to provide the new port number. Be sure that you write it down in a safe place so you do not forget. From the Remote Desktop client, append a colon after the ip address or after the host name and enter the port number after the colon. This will set everything up to operate normally.

This may be a simple task, but it certainly is an effective step to avoid security problems with Remote Desktop operations. A good account lockout policy and changing the RDP Port goes a long way to keep the PC bad guys at bay.

Windows users who do not use Remote Desktop can alternatively disable the service completely to close down access completely. This is done with a click on the Start button and the selection of Control Panel.

There you need to open the System Control Panel applet and select Remote Settings from the options.

Uncheck “allow remote assistance connections to this computer” and activate “don’t allow connections to this computer” under Remote Desktop.

Vinagre is a remote desktop tool with plenty of features and ease of use for just about any level of user. It’s enjoying release 2.30.1 so it’s quite mature. In this article I will show you how to install and use the default GNOME remote desktop tool.

Features

Vinagre offers enough features to help make it stand out among other rdp clients:

• Tabbed interface allows you to connect to multiple desktops in one window.
• Favorites keep you from having to enter those connection details every time you need to connect.
• Track your recent connections.
• Auto-discovery of VNC servers.
• No need for passwords (if you so choose).

Now let’s get to the installation and usage.

Installation

Most likely, if you are using a newer GNOME desktop, Vinagre is already installed. If you click Applications > Internet and you see Remote Desktop Viewer listed, it’s there. If not, follow these instructions:

1. Oopen up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “vinagre” (no quotes).
3. Mark vinagre for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! Vinagre is now installed.

Usage

Figure 1

In order to use Vinagre you have to have at least two workstations. Let’s take a look at connection to a Ubuntu desktop from a Fedora desktop. The first thing you have to do is allow the remote connections on the target machine. From the target machine (in this case Ubuntu 10.04) click System > Preferences > Remote Desktop which will open up the Vinagre preferences window (see Figure 1).

What you need to do is to first click the Allow other users to view your desktop. This will enable the server for incoming connections. The other options are specific to your needs and reflect security and quick access to the Vinagre application.

Once you have taken care of the target configuration, let’s go to the primary location – the Fedora desktop.

From Fedora click Applications > Internet > Remote Desktop Viewer to open up the main Vinagre window. Once there click on the Connect button to open up the connection dialogue  (see Figure 2). If you click the Find button any machine with a VNC server on your network will show up, which you can then select using the drop-down. If not, just enter the IP address of the machine and click Find. Once you’ve done that you can then control some of the graphic aspects of the connection (to spare bandwidth if necessary). Once you have set up your connection click Connect and Vinagre will open up a connection to the target machine. You should now be able to take control of said target (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

As you can see (in the remote machine) you get an alert that another user has connected to your machine.

Compiz issue

If you use Compiz on your target machine you might find your primary machine unable to control the target. If that’s the case there is a work around. To get around this problem you have to open up gconf-editor, navigate to desktop > gnome > applications > remote access, and then click the checkbox for disable_xdamage. Once you have done this close gconf-editor and your source machine should now be able to take control of the target.

Final thoughts

Vinagre is one of the easiest to use remote desktop tools I have come across. With the inclusion of tabs and favorites, it makes it a strong candidate to take over as your favorite remote tool for the Linux environment.

In this article I will show you how to take control of a remote Linux desktop with the help of x11vnc, Remote Desktop Viewer, and secure shell. You will, of course, have to have secure shell access to the remote machine. Other than that you have everything you need. So let’s get to work.

Installation

You will need the following installed in order to take on this task.

Local machine

• VNC client (such as gtk vnc)
• Ssh client (openssh works fine)

Remote machine

• Ssh server (openssh-server works great)
• VNC server (x11vnc is my recommdation)

Fire up your package management tool, search for the above applications, and install each. If you do not already have the secure shell server installed on the remote machine, you will need physical access in order to install the tools. If you already have the ssh server installed you can simply ssh to the remote machine and install the VNC server from command line (such as sudo apt-get install x11vnc) Once you have these installed you are ready to start setting up your connection.

x11vnc

The first thing you need to do is secure shell to the remote machine (we’ll say the remote machine is at IP address 192.168.1.10) and start up the VNC server. From the command line (on the remote machine) you will enter the command x11vnc. This will start the VNC server but you will not get your bash prompt returned to you. To have your VNC server running at all times you could add the line:

x11vnc &

to the end of your /etc/rc.local

The Client Machine

Figure 1

For the purposes of this tutorial I will use the Gtk VNC Viewer. It is a very simple to use, up to date, client. You will find this tool in Applications > Internet. When you first start it up you will see a fairly straight-forward connection window. You only need enter:

• IP Address:Port: IP address and port of the remote machine (in the form of 192.168.1.10:5900). NOTE: x11vnc uses port 5900 by default.
• User name: The user name you will connect with on the remote machine.
• Password: Password of the user on the remote machine.

If you know the above information is correct (and you know you’ll be connecting to this machine again) click the Add button to add the remote machine (as shown in Figure 1).

To connect to the remote machine either enter the information in the text areas and click the Connect button or double click on a saved machine from the list.

Figure 2

When you connect a new, maximized window will open showing your remote desktop (see Figure 2). From this window you can do the following:

• Disconnect: Disconnect from the remote machine.
• Send keys: Send key-combinations to the remote machine.
• Fullscreen: Switch to a full screen window.
• Screenshot: Take a screen shot of the remote desktop.
• Make icon on desktop: Create an icon that allows you to connect to this remote desktop with a double-click.

You can now interact with this remote machine as if it were your own desktop.

Final thoughts

Taking advantage of the remote desktop is a great way to train users or trouble shoot problems on a remote machine. I use this exact setup for a number of clients. It works well.

AutoPutty is a portable software program for Windows that can manage servers for all four software clients that have been mentioned in this article. Manage in this regard means that system administrators and webmasters can add server information, that is hostname or IP, port, username, password and type (WinSCP SCP or SFTP, Putty, Remote Desktop or VNC) in the program to connect to the server more quickly.

The system administrator can access the options of Autoputty to define the paths to the various applications and other settings like commands that should be executed or private key files for authentication (where supported). It is furthermore possible to password protect the application itself so that only authorized users are able to manage the connections and servers.

Autoputty (via Techie Buzz) is a free download for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 and uses less than one Megabyte of computer memory in minimized state. The biggest benefit of the program for system administrators is that it can manage servers for several applications which makes it a tad easier to maintain and connect to them.

VNC is a very popular remote desktop software that can be used to view a remote system’s desktop. It’s main limitation is that it can only be used to view one system at a time. VNC Thumbnail Viewer has been created to overcome this limitation. It is a remote desktop software that will display a realtime thumbnail image of remote computers on a server system. The software program comes with two components: A server program that has to be installed on all remote computer systems as this program sends screenshots of the desktop over the network. The viewer component can be run to display the desktops of the remote computer systems that send the desktop screenshots over the network.

The installation of VNC Thumbnail Viewer is outlined below:

• Start VNC Server on all remote computer systems. You also need to ensure that a VNC client like UltraVNC or TightVNC.
• Start VNC Thumbnail Viewer on another computer system.
• Connect it to the remote computer systems by entering their IP or Hostname, port number and server password. The window will automatically scale depending on the number of connected vnc servers
• A double-click will will open that server in a new window giving the admin control of the keyboard and mouse

The VNC Thumbnail Viewer application is available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

Some services offer free SSH accounts, to edit and access files anywhere, host websites, use them as proxies (or IPv6 gateways) and some even let you run processes like IRC bots and compilers.

Generally, such free Shell accounts impose a monthly bandwidth quota of a few megabytes, so you don’t use too much of their resources. Some providers are more generous than others, though, and some charge for additional space and bandwidth.

Most SSH providers offer Unix-based hosting. Mitja Sladovic offers a very large list of such free providers.

The most popular service is the SDF Public Access UNIX System, established in 1987. Free users are offered email hosting (POP or IMAP), games, access to the text-based ‘Lynx’ web browser, web hosting, various network utilities and 80MB space. For access to gcc, php etc., one must pay a one-off fee of $36. In order to validate your account, and receive access to network utilities, one must send them $1 or €5 (in order to deter spammers).

Blinkenshell is another interesting option. Free accounts get 50MiB of space, access to several compilers, an IPv6 tunnel, hosting, email, IRC access and even the ability to have MySQL databases. One can’t use Blinkenshell for IRC bots, though. A few services do provide access to eggdrop, a popular IRC bot, such as Polarhome and aeshells.

Naturally, novices may struggle with such services as no graphical interface is provided. These services do, however, provide a rapid way to compile applications on different platforms (like Linux and BSD) and allow boring processes, like IRC bots, to run for you.

Update: Freeshell is still the number one destination for free remote SSH accounts.

A free and a professional version of Moba SSH is available on the homepage. The server software installs itself as a Windows service. The remote desktop connection can then be established using selected user accounts of the host system. Shortcuts are available to manage users and add domain users.

Possible usage scenarios include centralized backups, system and network monitoring, remote commands, system administration or managing computers from a remote location.

To create a remote desktop connection to the PC running Moba SSH server one would simply use a SSH client like Putty to connect to the IP of the server. The system will ask for the credentials of one enabled user account to log into the system remotely.

Advanced options are available to change the port, allow tcp forwarding, enabling the cron service or enabling RA authentication.

One interesting feature of Teamviewer is Teamviewer portable which is a portable version of the remote access software which provides the same feature set but adds portability to it.

The portable version of Teamviewer comes as a general version and one specifically designed for U3 devices. All that needs to be done is to download the archive from the Teamviewer homepage and unpack it to an USB device. The application can then be executed from there easily and will leave no traces on the system it is executed from.

Make sure you check out the Remote Control Software Teamviewer article if you never heard of Teamviewer before.

Teamviewer is a remote desktop software that can be used to easily connect to other computers. The greatest benefits is that it is easy to setup even for users without broad technical knowledge and that it can be used for other purposes than remote desktop access such as presentations or virtual private networks. The Remote Control Software here at Ghacks took a closer look at the software and can be a good read for anyone unfamiliar with the product.

Teamviewer works by entering an unique ID and password in the software to connect to a client remotely. The Teamviewer shortcuts would basically eliminate the need of entering and remembering the ID and password before establishing a connection.

The basic idea is to create Teamviewer shortcuts in a folder on the hard drive and execute these to connect to the client computer. Lee created a folder for each client and one personal folder. So all that needs to be done is to create a shortcut of Teamviewer, right-click it and select Properties. The following parameters should be added in the target box of the shortcut: -i [tv ID number] –Password -[tv password]. (without the [] brackets)

Lee failed to list another possible shortcut: -m filetransfer would initiate file transfer mode. Other options are presentation to start a presentation session or starting the application without the -m parameter for remote support.

Functionality depends largely on the way GBridge is used. If the software program is installed on one computer the user can make use of the automatic backup option and chat. The backup can be used to store files locally if GBridge has been installed on one computer. The backup simply takes the files of a selected folder and copies them into the other location. Windows users who are only looking for a way to backup files could look at the more advanced Windows Backup Software Deltacopy instead.

It becomes more interesting if the user installs GBridge on multiple computers. The file backup can now be used to backup files in a remote location on the other computer. Another interesting option that becomes available to access files on every connected computer that the computer owner runs. It can be used to play multimedia files and access any other file type on another connected computer.

Lastly it is possible to run DesktopShare to access the other’s computer desktop to access it remotely.

GBridge comes with additional functions if it is installed on computers of different users who have added each other as friends. Secure Share and Auto Sync can be used to share files and folders with friends. The remote desktop option becomes available as well which is interesting for remote computer assistance and remote presentation.

GBridge uses a virtual private network infrastructure that automatically expands across all computers owned by the same user and which can also be expanded to include computers owned by friends.

GBridge requires a Gmail account and a Windows NT operating system.

You normally use a phone or voip to communicate which is the preferred way to give the Supporter the data that he needs to access the computer. Teamviewer uses RSA-encryption to ensure that all data is encrypted between both computers. The module on the client computer does not have to be installed at all, it can be run and supplies all information necessary. The software works even if Firewalls or Proxies are installed on the client machine.

Teamviewer offers two modes. The first is the normal remote desktop mode which gives the Supporter full control over the clients machine. You can even initiate file transfers between both computers if it is necessary to send files to the client.

The second mode is interesting as well. It is called the presentation mode which mirrors the Supporters desktop at the clients machine. The client is therefor viewing everything that the Supporter is demonstrating at his computer. Great for online presentations for instance.

Teamviewer is working on every Windows edition starting with Windows 98. There is currently no support for Linux or Mac.

We have to rely on third party products to add Remote Desktop functionality to Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium. The software that we are going to use is called TightVNC. It takes up about two megabytes of disk space on your system and requires some basic configuration to work.

The current user properties can be edited during the installation of the program. You should supply a secure password, set a port or port range that should be used and edit the other options that are visible in the configuration menu. I would advise to remove the option to disable remote keyboard and pointer (view-mode only).

Congratulations you have added remote desktop support to Windows Vista Home Basic and Premium.