Is VNC safe for remote control?

  • Thread starter Thread starter walala
  • Start date Start date
W

walala

Dear all,

I used RADMIN and got some "Nachi" virus warning and was checked by
our security personnel...(please see my previous post for details)

I cannot help thinking about using VNC instead of RADMIN.

I know there is no remote control program that is absolutely safe...
but is that true that VNC is at least safer than RADMIN?

And how to make it very safe? By downloading patches? Using SSH? But I
guess SSH cannot avoid the server being intruded and scanned, since
the port is always listening, right?

Can anybody tell me how to do that, because I realy don't want to
bother our security person always come to ask to check my PC and
unhook me from the Internet...

Thanks a lot

-Wlalal
 
No its not safe, and performancewise its poor. My advice would be Symantec
PC Anywhere. You can set access to specific passworded callers etc. Still
not absolutely secure but significantly better than VNC in every respect.

ANDY
 
Why not use Remote Desktop if you are using Windows XP or 2000. Also, I use
Remote Administrator and have never had any problems, I have recently
changed to VNC, RealVNC and it is working fine, although as previously
stated performance is quite poor. I am going to change to Ultra@VNC which
improves performance but is no longer cross platform.

It depends if you want to spend money or not, I use remote desktp and vnc
because they are free, if you can justify the expenditure, I have heard good
reports about symantec.
 
Andy Cowley said:
No its not safe, and performancewise its poor. My advice would be Symantec
PC Anywhere. You can set access to specific passworded callers etc. Still
not absolutely secure but significantly better than VNC in every respect.

ANDY
Click to expand...

How about that RemoteDesktop in WINDOWSXP then?

-Walala
 
Andy Cowley said:
No its not safe, and performancewise its poor. My advice would be Symantec
PC Anywhere. You can set access to specific passworded callers etc. Still
not absolutely secure but significantly better than VNC in every respect.

ANDY
Click to expand...

Hi, Andy,

How about the remoteassistance and remote desktop in WINDOWXP then? Is
that safer? What patches shall I put on if I am going to turn to this
one?

Thanks a lot,

-Walala
 
Vnc(or remote administration programs that are similiar) can be encrytpted
if your using the right programs. PC anywhere has always, and as far as I
know still does, pass its password in plain text format to the host computer
when you try to connect. Anyone viewing that packet could get your pc
anywhere password.
 
walala said:
Andy Cowley <[email protected]> wrote in message

Hi, Andy,

How about the remoteassistance and remote desktop in WINDOWXP then? Is
that safer? What patches shall I put on if I am going to turn to this
one?
Click to expand...
Remote desktop and assistance are both secure enough for normal remote
control use. I wouldn't use it on a computer with confidential trade
secrects, but your home or work computer is fine. Your firewall
configuration can secure the connection attemps even more and changing the
default remote desktop port is also a goos idea.
 
And I would offer exactly the opposite suggestion -- I would never put PC
Anywhere on a computer, especially a business computer. VNC on the other
hand, in conjuction with using VPN to establish a remote conneciton, works
great for me. Why? PCA is way to intrusive for my liking. VNC, on the other
hand, is small and appears to not affect other services. I even run it on my
servers, so I can access them remotely.

As to performance, some versions of VNC are a bit better at video refresh
than others. Check out TightVNC and UltraVNC. In all cases, the price is
right - free.
-kw
 
Andy Cowley said:
No its not safe, and performancewise its poor. My advice would be Symantec
PC Anywhere. You can set access to specific passworded callers etc. Still
not absolutely secure but significantly better than VNC in every respect.
Click to expand...
Andy,

As for performance.....you need a better stopwatch. PCA's performance is
awful....and extremely hard on sys resources and other services. I also
believe PCA _STILL_ sends it's password in clear text.

IMHO
CR
ANDY

On 30 Oct 2003 22:04:19 -0800, walala <[email protected]> wrote:
Click to expand...

[ snip ]
Walala,

VNC is fine. SSH is no more "open" because it's always listening than
anything else is. If you are using PCA over TCP/IP, it's still always
listening on it's inbound port. If you are using VNC without SSH, it's
always listening on 5900 (and I think it's 5800 for java based). If you
aren't already behind a firewall, you always listening on many ports that
are open to the internet. SSH _IS_ at least more secure thans without it.

And quite frankly, IMHO, in terms os it's performance is one of the best
remote control apps out there.

AND IT'S FREE.
IMHO
CR
 
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