vnc-wrap

If you have enabled Mac OS X's built-in VNC server ("Screen Sharing") and make any use of it, you are hopefully aware that it is pretty desperately insecure. It does not support encrypted connections, so your username and password are simple to sniff.

One solution, if you don't want to buy the OS X Server edition or a more expensive VNC server, is to send the VNC connection over an encrypted SSH tunnel.

This requires a few things:

• You understand what SSH connections are
• You have enabled "Remote Login" (the SSH server) in the Sharing preference pane on the remote machine
• You have an account on the remote machine (not just a VNC password)

..but not much else.

Using vnc-wrap

To use vnc-wrap, simply launch it. You'll be asked for a hostname. When given, vnc-wrap will try to create an ssh tunnel there. If it succeeds, it will then start up Screen Sharing so that it connects through the tunnel.

More detailed info

• By default, vnc-wrap will not specify a remote username to SSH. If your account on the remote machine has a different name from your local account, you can either configure SSH always to use the right username when connecting to the other machine (see ssh_config(5)) or give your username along with the hostname when vnc-wrap prompts. Example: "[email protected]".

• The first time you connect somewhere, vnc-wrap might ask for your ssh password. It will store it in the OS X Keychain so that it won't have to ask again. If you don't want your password stored there, you should really set up SSH keys and configure your ssh-agent so that vnc-wrap doesn't need to ask for a password.

• Screen Sharing will also probably ask for a password the first time you connect somewhere with vnc-wrap, even if you have stored the VNC password for that host in your keychain. The remote host will look like a new one to Screen Sharing.

  (icky detail: all remote hosts will be called "localhost", as far as Screen Sharing can tell, but vnc-wrap will use the same local listening port for the same destination host to the extent it can do so, since Screen Sharing stores VNC passwords in the keychain indexed by remote hostname and port. So you should only need to tell Screen Sharing to store your password once, should you care to do so.)

Building from source

Sorry, I'm not hardcore enough to know how to build this in an automated way. Let me know if you have some fu for it. But here are the manual steps:

• Start AppleScript Editor
• Open the vnc-wrap.applescript file.
• From the menu, choose File, Save As..., and save vnc-wrap with File Format: Application.
• This will cause "Bundle Contents" icon in the toolbar to become un-grayed. Click it to open the Bundle Contents sidebar.
• Drag the askpass.sh file from another Finder window into the Bundle Contents sidebar.
• Save vnc-wrap again and exit AppleScript editor.
• vnc-wrap.app should now be everything you need.