[ILUG] Accessing home computer from outside

[Paul Mc Auley]

On Saturday 30 December 2006 15:22, Colm Buckley wrote:
> On 30/12/06, Timothy Murphy <tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:

> > What is the safest way of accessing a Linux home computer from outside?
> > I'm running Fedora-6 with shorewall.

> SSH is generally considered secure if you have good password choices -
> or better, only use pre-shared keys.  It's not a great idea to just
> leave the ssh port open to the outside world (you get a lot of
> dictionary attacks), so a combination of:

>    * Run ssh from a port other than 22
>    * Restrict the IP ranges from which connections can be made
>    * Implement port knocking

> SSH of course only gives you the text console by default, but you can
> tunnel other TCP protocols over an established SSH connection.  If you
> want to access the graphical (X) screen over a high-latency or
> low-bandwidth link, an accelerator such as NX is probably a good idea.

It's worth considering that the link constraint also applies to the target 
server (so even if you are on a very well connected network at the client 
end, if the server is talking to you through a 128kbps upstream, you _will_ 
feel the hurt).

What are you trying to access? Is it just shell mode operations? If you 
don't need GUI elements but may need other protocols such as POP3 and HTTP, 
ssh tunneling can carry the day nine times out of 10 and I suspect it would 
suit the needs in this case, but in the more general case openvpn is worth 
a look.
	Paul