How to Use VNC with SSH

VNC is a common remote desktop sharing tool used typically for administration and assistance purposes. By its very nature, the VNC protocol is insecure since it provides no built-in encryption support. Therefore, to achieve security, you either have to use a third-party encryption solution or tunnel your traffic over SSH to a secure relay. Not only is this a good way to secure a VNC connection, it's also a great way to circumvent restrictive firewalls and routers.

• 1

  Download and install an SSH client for your operating system. If you use Linux or Mac OS X, you will most likely have OpenSSH already installed on your system. As Windows does not come with an SSH client, you will need to download OpenSSH or use another graphical client such as PuTTY on your Windows system. The OpenSSH site has a list of Windows alternatives (see Resources).

• 2

  Launch a terminal window, found in your applications folder, if you are using the OpenSSH client. Otherwise, launch a command prompt by typing "cmd" into the "Run" utility provided with Windows.

• 3

  Type "ssh -C -L 5900:localhost:5900 server" where "server" is the domain name or IP address of the VNC server that is also running an SSH server. You could also change "localhost" to the domain name or IP address of a VNC server and then replace "server" with only the SSH server. This would simply forward your connection off "server" to "localhost" and back again. Press "Enter" to execute the command.

• 4

  Launch your VNC client, or viewer, and enter "localhost" as the address. Click "Connect" or "OK" to initiate the VNC connection. Enter your authentication information, when requested, to establish the secure VNC session over SSH.