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davidh
December 6th, 2006, 12:30 PM
CrossLoop - Simple Secure Screen Sharing
# Connect Any Two PCs on Earth
# Simple, Easy-To-Use Interface
# Fully Encrypted Help Sessions
# Works through Firewalls and NAT
# Secure Screen Sharing in under Sixty Seconds
"Connection works well, even though both computers are behind firewalls and routers."

DH

dgermann
December 9th, 2006, 01:03 PM
David--

Have you tried it?

How does it compare to RealVNC?

:- Doug.

davidh
December 9th, 2006, 03:24 PM
David--

Have you tried it?

How does it compare to RealVNC?

:- Doug.

I have only really used VNC on LAN.

My step son does system admin among other things professionally and recommended it (CrossLoop) to me.

I don't know if VNC does encryption or not, don't remember. Crossloop does.

The set up of a connection with Crossloop looks to be REALLY SIMPLE. Significantly more so than VNC, IIRC.

I hope to do a realistic test of it soon. But don't hold your breath.

Crossloop appears to have some official connection to Skype (eBay?). So it's probably more than a flash in the pan. I also have no idea whether the program will remain free indefinitely.

DH

sidney
December 10th, 2006, 08:13 AM
I took a look at the CrossLoop website and read their info.

It is VNC, specifically TightVNC which is a GPL VNC client and server, along with CrossLoop's code and service that provides an encrypted VPN tunnel between the VNC client and server machines. Because they have you use the unmodified TightVNC executables, they are able to keep their own code proprietary, i.e., they don't link their proprietary software directly to the GPL software.

This is equivalent to running VNC over any VPN link or ssh tunnel that provides end-to-end encryption between the client and server. What CrossLoop offers is ease of use in setting that up. What they don't offer is the assurance of security that you would have by using a well established and well studied open source implementation of a mature protocol such as OpenSSH or OpenVPN for your encrypted tunnel.

I see no reason not to trust them, but I am not easy about trusting a proprietary cryptographic protocol when all we know about it is that they claim 128 bit encryption security and "12 digit" access codes. I note that 12 decimal digits is equivalent to 40 binary bits, which indicates that they may be providing only 40 bits of effective security with their 128 bit algorithm.

For myself, I'll continue to run VNC between my computers over the ssh or OpenVPN tunnels I have set up between them. CrossLoop might be good if I really wanted to have a VNC session with someone else who has limited computer experience and I'm not worried about someone trying to hack in during a limited time when the connection is operational, but I'm never personally in that situation.

David, you mentioned an association between CrossLoop and Skype. Did you see anything indicating that other than the Skype button on their home page? Because that is just a button to fire up a Skype call to talk to them, not an indication of a corporate association.

-- sidney

davidh
December 10th, 2006, 09:02 AM
David, you mentioned an association between CrossLoop and Skype. Did you see anything indicating that other than the Skype button on their home page? Because that is just a button to fire up a Skype call to talk to them, not an indication of a corporate association.
-- sidney

You may well be right about that. I just assumed so because of the button.

DH

davidh
December 21st, 2006, 10:52 PM
David--

Have you tried it?

How does it compare to RealVNC?

:- Doug.
I had a successful session of long distance remote tech support this past weekend lasting a few hours. Screen updates were quite responsive.

Sure as heck beats trying to talk somebody thru some software that I did not have locally and which I had only run successfully once, more than a year ago. I.e. I had forgotten the secret trick to make the software do what I wanted and had to learn by trial and error since I had no docs.

Connecting up was easy.

DH

dgermann
December 24th, 2006, 04:02 PM
David--

Neat!

I am inclined to go the way sidney suggests, because of the security issues.

I use RealVNC internally to access a Win95 machine from my desktop Linux machine. It is usable for that, unless I have a lot of data to enter, then I just go sit at that machine and do that there.

Thanks for the report back, David!

:- Doug.