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Recently, someone in my family was not able to get into their home PC with their password, and called for assistance. This means having to drive down to the machine to see what they are doing, and log in with the appropriate account that can reset that password. Work commitments preclude driving there right away to see what is happening, and I am trying to locate a remote access solution. If they were logged into the machine, I could use some sort of remote assistance tool, but that is not an option in this case. There is the possibility of setting up SSH or OpenVPN to access the machine via the Internet, but I am not certain leaving those tools running all the time is the smartest idea in this day and age.
What recommendations do the Soylent community have for securely managing a machine over the Internet when someone is not logged into it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:55PM
You could set up a PC (or raspberry pi/similar) for remote access (e.g. openvpn via a non default port). If your family members need help, they turn it on and then it is a gateway for you to the other machines. When you're done shut it down.
If you're very paranoid you could use port knocking or related stuff (e.g. port knocking with packets that contain a correct OTP), etc.
But seriously, I wouldn't bother with the port knocking or more sophisticated stuff because if the first method isn't good enough for the attackers you encounter, your family are probably good as pwned whatever you do. After all they need help from you and you're asking for help on such stuff here ;).
BTW setup some automated backups while you're at it (so if they get ransomware or hardware failures you might at least have some backups for them).