Get on your computer from home. Safe & Secure

Need to get on your computer at home from a friends house? Want to check on the kids from work?

This is how you can safely and securely get on to your home computer from anywhere that has the internets.

Required:
1. Broadband Internet
2. An ISP that allows hosting of SSH servers
3. FreeSSHD (Free)
4. RealVNC (Free)
5. PUTTY (Free)

Step 1 Install freeSSH server

In order to access your computer you need to install freeSSHD. This program creates a server that allows you to make an SSH connection to your home machine. The connections is encrypted which makes it very secure but can slow down the connection, especially if you have slower internet.

SSH is a protocol that allows you to get a command prompt remotely. It will be identical to "cmd.exe".

To install it you need to download it from the website: freesshd.com. You will need to have administrative rights on the machine. This is for windows machines, there are similar apps for Mac.

Look at the picture below for information on setting up the server.

Comments

[GuitarGuy420]

I followed this to the letter and couldn't get it to work, I spend 3 days fallowing every instruction, every picture, and every word and still nothing. I'm not saying that it doesn't work but I am saying that I couldn't get it to work. Any suggestions? Maybe my router, Actiontec GT704-WG and internet service wont let me. Also there is the question of what IP address do you use to connect to your computer when your router has a dynamic IP. I tried to make it static but no luck.

[natural_orange]

A simple way to isolate the issue is to try testing from another computer on the same network, try to connect via SSH and setup Tunnelling and Connect to VNC. If that doesn't work then the issue is on the computer not the router. You should try and set your router to assign the computer your doing this on to a static ip, this is normally done in your routers dhcp settings and normally require tell the router a MAC address to assign a specific IP address to. Once you have done that you need to Port Forward SSH to that Private LAN address. You can use any external port you want as long is it points to the SSH port of the internal computer. for example if you think your isp is blocking SSH you can use 31337 or 4444 whatever is easy for you to remember. Then when your at work or wherever you need to connect to your routers public ip address. You can get this by going to whatismip.org or natualorange.net/ip If you find that your public ip address changes frequently you can setup an account with dyndns.com if your router supports it. Once you setup your router it will automatically change the ip that you dyndns account points to.

[divxnz]

Just use logmein.com much easier and free...!

[bgray1009]

its not free its $99 minimum, you only get a free trial for 30 days

[Davidl3]

there is a free version that you can use limitlessly

[natural_orange]

Accept this allows you to do a lot of other nice features like doing Secure file transfers. You can also do a lot of other things. Plus you get the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

[littlechef37]

Or you could use this It takes a minute to install and its FREE.......

As complex as it looks Good instructable

[bgray1009]

To littlechef37 its not free its $99 minimum, you only get a free trial for 30 days

[cornboy3]

Or ya know you could just take realVNC and use your exernal IP instead of your internal and it would work fine anywhere.

[natural_orange]

except unless you pay for realVNC Enterprise (with Encryption) you are vulnerable to a number of exploits including session hijacking and bypassing authentication. This setup although somewhat complicated, its pretty simple once you get down to it. Your just using SSH to tunnel back to your computer. FreeSSHD allows you to transfer files via SCP.

[techwiz]

What makes this better than remote desktop?

[natural_orange]

You need to setup a user name in FreeSSHD first and then use that username and password. Go back a step and look through all the pictures.

[wayfast]

Im having a problem with PuTTY. When i login, what name do i use? Its not a business computer. Its a home PC. I made up a name hoping that would work. But then it would not let me enter a password. Couldnt type anything then. Any suggestion?

[vaiden]

Thats alot of steps to do it your way. Check out ultraVNC, which can run as a service, has ssh built in, so no ssh server needed, gives you full control of your PC, and can automatically bypass NAT devices with no port forwarding necessary, since forwarding ports is the same as opening ports and thats a security risk. Have a look, I think youll like it.

[Myself]

If you're hauling files around on a USB flash drive, you might as well use key-based instead of password-based authentication.

[Biotele]

How do I hack my router remotely? I forgot to port forward before changing the ip of the computer. Now it's hiding behind the router and I don't have remote management on the router enabled.

[natural_orange]

Then you have to wait until you get home and change the settings. You really shouldn't use remote admin/management anyway.

[Biotele]

I wish it was that easy. I am on trip far from home. Do you know of any exploit tools?

[erfonz]

You should google "VNC BL4CK" it's a wonderful little program that bypasses your 10-15 letter password. It works. If you want to run RealVNC, you need to get the pay version with encryption, BL4CK can't bypass if it's encrypted.

[jwater7]

It's not the vnc password this is using, it's the ssh password, so VNC BL4CK won't work with this setup (ssh tunnel).

[jwater7]

Oh, and VNC BL4CK only works on RealVNC version 4.1.1, it's been patched.

[natural_orange]

exactly, you have to connect to the computer via ssh first in order to use the RealVNC. RealVNC is only accepting connections from the computer itself (the SSH server) which is tunneling the connection with encryption to the client computer. You don't even need to have a password on RealVNC unless you need to be really secure.

[LasVegas]

Anytime you leave an SSH Server running and open on your computer, your not safe. A good hacker could get into your computer with very little effort.

[cpotoso]

I have had sshd running on several linux boxes for more than 10 years (since 1996) and have not had a break into any box (or at least none that I knew!!!). I think that ssh is reasonably safe (meaning that unless you have a very high profile for hackers the chance of getting hacked is small). All ports that are open present a risk, but almost all activities in life do have a risk, the issue is whether the benefit is worth the risk.

[natural_orange]

I have had an SSH server running for over month with no security issues Just make sure that your pass phrase is long.... like over 10 or 15 characters.

[tiuk]

SSH-2 is quite secure. Telnet, and SSH-1 are not.