In an attempt to get remote desktop set up over SSL tunneling with compression, I have installed stunnel on my Windows XP Professional SP2 machine and created a "portable" stunnel/config/dll zip that just contains the essentials to create a pre-configured tunnel.
Here are the two config files:
Server -------------------------------- ; Sample stunnel configuration file by Michal Trojnara 2002-2005 ; Some options used here may not be adequate for your particular configuration
; Certificate/key is needed in server mode and optional in client mode ; The default certificate is provided only for testing and should not ; be used in a production environment cert = stunnel.pem key = stunnel.pem
; Some performance tunings socket = l:TCP_NODELAY=1 socket = r:TCP_NODELAY=1 compression = zlib
; Some debugging stuff useful for troubleshooting debug = 6 output = G:\Stunnel Logs\stunnel.log
taskbar = no
; Use it for client mode client = no
; Service-level configuration
[remote-desktop] accept = 9833 connect = 127.0.0.1:3389
---------------------------------
Client --------------------------------- ; Sample stunnel configuration file by Michal Trojnara 2002-2005 ; Some options used here may not be adequate for your particular configuration
; Some performance tunings socket = l:TCP_NODELAY=1 socket = r:TCP_NODELAY=1 compression = zlib
; Some debugging stuff useful for troubleshooting debug = 7 output = stunnel.log
taskbar = yes
; Use it for client mode client = yes
; Service-level configuration
[remote-desktop] accept = 127.0.0.1:6389 connect = my.host.name:9833 ----------------------------------
The procedure I used was as follows - start Stunnel on the host, run upstairs with the zipped "portable" stunnel on a USB drive, run stunnel on the other PC, also running XP Pro SP2. Start->run->mstsc, enter 127.0.0.1:6389 and all that happens is that stunnel instantly crashes then Remote Desktop times out.
What am I doing wrong?
Jonathan Bell wrote:
In an attempt to get remote desktop set up over SSL tunneling with compression
Remote desktop uses self-signed certs to do its own encryption and authorization, there is infact a knowledge base entry on what to do if this cert becomes corrupted. The tunnel is only susceptible to an MITM account, so there is no reason to use stunnel. Furthermore, excluding sound and files, RDP sends draw commands rather than trying to send images ala Netmeeting, thus its overhead is VERY small.
<snip>
[remote-desktop] accept = 127.0.0.1:6389 connect = my.host.name:9833
The procedure I used was as follows - start Stunnel on the host, run upstairs with the zipped "portable" stunnel on a USB drive, run stunnel on the other PC, also running XP Pro SP2. Start->run->mstsc, enter 127.0.0.1:6389 and all that happens is that stunnel instantly crashes then Remote Desktop times out.
RDP runs on 3389 not 9833, and changing the port is not supported on the client or the server.
What am I doing wrong?
If you have any other questions feel free to ask :)
-
Alaric Dailey -
Jonathan Bell