[FreeNX-kNX] nxclient and "challengeresponseauthentication no"

[Brian Keener]

On 2/5/06, * * <richardvoigt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Just run nxclient?  Type in your boss's userid and password and xterm
> with the shell of your choice in unix custom?  I fail to see much
> distinction between typing "su..." at a prompt and having nxserver run
> it for me, if I control the input.
>
> I was just trying to point out to someone with sysadmin aspirations
> that having remote sessions via password (using NX) defeats the
> purpose of "PasswordAuthentication no" in sshd-config.
>
> <snip>
>
> If you are willing to give up the password-login and the NoMachine
> client, then you can ENABLE_USERMODE_AUTHENTICATION="1" and use keys.
>
> If you want to have password-login but not allow the world to brute
> force your box, then don't use the nomachine key.
>
> To reiterate, if you are afraid of having your box accessed remotely,
> what possessed you to run NX, which has no purpose other than
> (interactive) remote access?
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How does nxserver use "su" to impersonate the intended user, out of
curiosity?

I realize you only get an nxserver prompt if you were to ssh in using the
default key.  I assume that the nxclient issues commands of some sort to
execute su and other tasks, what commands are those?  Are they plain text
commands or some sort of additional authentication/encryption/whatever
performed at that point?

I haven't had the time to do anything further with nxserver, myself.  I
absolutely require cygwin to do many of my day-to-day tasks at work, and the
fact that I apparantly must choose between Cygwin or NXClient has pretty
much caused me to abandon my nxclient investigations for the moment and
return to tightvnc tunneled over SSH.  I see there's something called the
"web companion" but since I don't intend on running a webserver on my target
machine I'm not sure if that's any use to me.

Brian K
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