SSH and RDP Security

To make RDP more secure for a connection over the internet, it's recommended to use an SSH tunnel.

SSH Tunneling with PuTTY

You can do this with PuTTY. In PuTTY, create a tunnel setting:

• Source Port: 1234 (or another free port)
• Destination: localhost:3389

You can use any arbitrary port (like 1234) as a local port. This doesn't need to be open in your firewall, because the traffic goes through the already opened SSH port (default 22).

How Does it Work?

You connect to a local port on your own computer. The SSH client sends this traffic encrypted through the tunnel to the SSH server, which then delivers it 'locally' to the RDP service (port 3389).

In your RDP client (Remote Desktop Connection), you then connect with:

• Computer: 127.0.0.1:1234
• User: servername\user