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Technical Analysis: Security Considerations for rdesktop and Windows Terminal Services by jcannon on June 17, 2008 02:10PM

Abstract: Microsoft Terminal Services provides an important set of functionality for remote administration and centralized application management.  This service allows administrators to log in remotely and with full access to the system. Similarly, users can log in and run specific applications, which are centrally managed by IT personnel. The standard client for Linux systems is rdesktop. Rdesktop is shipped with many Linux distributions and this paper briefly looks at common security considerations around using this client application in Windows environments.

Download Security Considerations for rdesktop and Windows Terminal Services

Note: This paper represents testing and documentation in a lab environment. User Account Control (UAC) is an essential security component to Windows and Microsoft does not recommend turning off UAC in production environments.

Attachment: Security Considerations for rdesktop.pdf
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  1. falde said:

    The main problem here is that there is no official RDP client for linux. The RDP protocol itself is closed and undocumented, which makes implementations as rdesktop difficult to do and maintain.

    To solve this, Microsoft should release the specifications for the protocol. Parts of or the whole protocol should be collected in a "librdp" under an open source license to make sure that clients like rdesktop can achieve full compatibility.

    After all, rdestop and Terminal Services is a good way to make sure that Microsoft Windows will stay on peoples desktop, even if they choose another operating system to deal with their hardware.

    posted at 04:06PM 07/09/2008
  2. Joseph Cohen said:

    That is incorrect. Not only is RDP protocol documented (mostly corrected) but the server side of the protocol was recently clean room implemented using those RDP docs for another platform. Together with Microsoft and Apple, Aqua Connect created the world's first commercial RDP server for NON-windows platforms, namely the Apple OS X platform. Check out our website for more info. In addition we were up at Microsoft's EEC Lab to test our RDP implementation against various test apps that Microsoft wrote and I would like to say it worked out great. Parts of our app will be open sourced soon but the RDP module will not be.

    posted at 12:52AM 07/31/2008
  3. srinath said:

    i have a issue with terminal server

    OS:windows 2003 sp1. when user login through RDP from xp system

    then session stops at applying settings screen? if i reboot the server then will work for a day then same problem repeates.

    what could be the problem? please let me know

    With Best regards

    srinath

    posted at 11:00AM 10/07/2008
  4. riverbed wan acceleration said:

    We already saw the Diamond and Omnia in action and you’ re free to replay the game here. The Diamond surely has a few things to offer over the Omnia (VGA screen, smaller size, 3D acceleration, and magnetic stylus) but it also has its issues here and there

    posted at 04:07AM 12/15/2008
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