Encrypting X by SSH Tunneling

One of the big drawbacks to X is that it provides no way to encrypt your data. Thus, raw X sessions are risky choices for performing tasks with sensitive data, including system administration tasks. One way around this problem is to tunnel the X connection through SSH. Fortunately, this task is fairly easy to do, and it provides an excellent level of encryption. It does require specific configuration options on both the client and the server, however.

Advantages and Disadvantages of X SSH Tunneling

By and large, SSH tunneling is a great boon for using X. Its main advantage is its encryption, but it has other pluses, as well:

Compression: SSH supports data compression as well as encryption. Using these features can improve the speed of X sessions, depending on the speed of the two computers’ CPUs and their CPU loads. (See the upcoming list of drawbacks for more on this issue.) This feature is most likely to be important on slow network links.
Simplified sign-ons: The procedure for initiating the connection using the remote text-mode login protocol, described earlier, is awkward. Using SSH tunneling actually simplifies this procedure, although the underlying connection model is actually more complex.
Simplified firewall requirements: Because a tunneled X connection is carried over an SSH link, you don’t need to be concerned with working around firewall limitations for X alone. If you can establish an SSH connection between a user’s desktop computer and a remote server, the X connection can be tunneled through any intervening firewalls. (Firewalls on the X client and server might still remain obstacles if they’re extremely tight.)

Tunneling X through SSH isn’t without its drawbacks:

CPU time and speed: The encryption and decryption processes take a certain amount of CPU time on both systems. This fact can slow down connections, particularly if one or both systems has a weak CPU. This factor can sometimes be mitigated by use of SSH’s compression features, which can improve data throughput, but the compression itself will consume CPU time. Ultimately, the speed consequences of using SSH tunneling are uncertain; you’ll have to test it on your own network to know.
Support: Using SSH for tunneling means that you’ll need to run an SSH server on your X client computer and an SSH client on your X server system. This may complicate your software installation, particularly if you wouldn’t ordinarily be installing SSH clients on your X server (that is, desktop) systems. Furthermore, not all SSH clients support tunneling X connections, although most do.
Extra configuration and debugging: Even when you’d ordinarily install the necessary SSH software for purposes other than tunneling X, you must configure both the client and server to handle the job. This task shouldn’t be a difficult one, but doing it on dozens or hundreds of systems could be tedious. If something doesn’t work, tracking down the source of the problem will become more tedious than it would be without SSH in the picture.
Lack of XDMCP support: Tunneling X connections over a standard text-mode login session is fairly easy, but adding XDMCP to the mix is not. If you want to provide remote system selection akin to that provided by an XDMCP chooser (Figure 11-6), your best bet is to write a simple program or to use an X server that can do the job via an integrated SSH client.

Overall, tunneling X over SSH is worth doing; these disadvantages are minor compared to the advantages, particularly in encryption. In fact, if you want to use X between computers on the Internet at large, I wouldn’t recommend doing it in any way that doesn’t provide encryption, and SSH is one of the simpler ways of providing encryption to X connections.

SSH Server Options

Chapter 10 provides information on configuring SSH to accept remote text-mode logins. If you’ve not already read that chapter and don’t know how to configure SSH, you should read up on the topic. The assumption hereafter is that you have a working SSH server and can log into it from the system you intend to use as an X server.

On the SSH server computer, you should examine the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file. (Be sure to examine the correct file and not the similarly named ssh_config file, which configures the SSH client.) This file contains an option that’s critical for tunneling X:

X11Forwarding yes

The default setting for this option is no, so unless you explicitly set it to yes, your SSH server will refuse to forward X connections. If this option needs to be altered, you should do so and then restart or reload your SSH server.

SSH Client Options and Use

In the Linux OpenSSH client, the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file controls the client options. This file contains an option that’s analogous to the SSH server’s X forwarding option:

ForwardX11 yes

This option defaults to no, which blocks X tunneling. To enable this feature by default, you must change the setting in the main SSH client configuration file. Unlike the server option, individual users can override this default with command-line options to the ssh command: the -x option disables X forwarding, and -X enables it. (Note that these options differ only in case.)

Using X forwarding is fairly straightforward: from an X session, a user can employ SSH to log in to a remote system and then immediately launch X programs, without typing extra commands:

$ ssh -X linnaeus@pluto
Password:
Last login: Mon Dec 27 11:24:49 2004 from venus.pangaea.edu
Have a lot of fun...
linnaeus@pluto:~> xeyes

The elaborate procedure of setting the DISPLAY environment variable and setting permissions on the local X server becomes unnecessary; more precisely, the X client and server handle these tasks transparently to the user. Programs run on the remote system are displayed on the local X server just as if a more traditional unencrypted X connection had been established. Of course, if X isn’t already running locally, it must be started first.

Tip

This particular example uses the -X option, which means that it will work whether or not the local SSH client is configured to tunnel X. This option may be omitted if you’ve configured your local X client to do so. The remote SSH server must be configured to tunnel X in either case, though.

What about Windows, though? The procedure is basically the same for it, but configuration details may differ. In particular, you should check your preferred SSH client’s configuration options for one that enables X forwarding. For instance, Figure 11-7 shows the relevant option for the PuTTY SSH client in Windows. You must check the “Enable X11 forwarding” option and, if necessary, adjust the “X display location” field (the default is fine in most cases).

Figure 11-7. Windows SSH clients typically provide a GUI menu option to enable X forwarding

Some Windows X servers include integrated SSH clients. These systems can be used to establish encrypted SSH sessions that tunnel X automatically, much as they can establish links using Telnet or other unencrypted login protocols. Thus, you may want to check your Windows X server for SSH support before using a separate SSH client.

Tip

If you’re not sure whether your encryption is encrypted, one quick check is to type echo $DISPLAY in an xterm window that uses the connection. If the result reads localhost:10.0, you’re almost certainly using a tunneled SSH connection. This response indicates that programs are connecting to their local computer on the tenth X port, which is the one that the SSH server sets up for its tunneling. If the result of typing this command is your.host.name:0.0, and your.host.name is your X server’s hostname, it means that your connection isn’t encrypted.

Previous Chapter

Using Remote X Access

Next Chapter

VNC Configuration and Use

Table of Contents for Linux in a Windows World

Encrypting X by SSH Tunneling

Advantages and Disadvantages of X SSH Tunneling

SSH Server Options

SSH Client Options and Use

Tip

Tip

Table of Contents for
Linux in a Windows World