On Saturday 04 November 2006 08:04, Douglas R Boyd wrote: > ......[She only > has one phone line which is tied up when she has an internet > connection]
In cases like this an instant messaging client is good, e.g. Gaim, to allow communication between users in real time. If you have turned the sound on then you will be alerted when a message arrives. On DSL lines Skype or similar VoIP applications will allow you to talk to each other. I fear that a dial up connection will not have the bandwidth required to carry voice and VNC data. > What Happened: Following the directions and documentation on the Real > VNC website, we configured VNC Server on her computer and entered a > password, "helper". The word "helper" is not a password. It's an invitation for someone to hack into your machine! Of course the dial up will slow things down, but a strong password will offer additional protection. A more secure password would look like: "D3(kU7%d" both in terms of length and in terms of randomness of characters. > She started VNC in user mode, established a > connection, hovered her mouse over the VNC icon in the system tray to > get her IP address and emailed her IP address to me. I started the > viewer on my machine, entered her IP address and tried to get a > connection. I repeatedly got a message something like this, > "connection failed, password for authentication not set". Of course, > I knew we had a password set so I tried to connect several times but > gave up after about 15 minutes and went on with other tasks on my > machine, confident that I had no connection or control of her > machine. The FAQ mentions using a passwd up to eight characters (your was less than that) and it also says that a password *must* be set, or access is blocked. Are you absolutely positive that the password was correctly entered and the OK button pressed? Other than that I have found that over dial up the performance of the connection is poor and you may have to enter the password a few times before it connects. Finally, do both machines have the same keyboard layout? Otherwise, your key presses correspond to different characters at the receiving end. By the way, what has she been using with regards to a firewall and has it been configured properly to allow connections from your IP? > RESULT: her computer was left with a connection and with VNC Server > running for about 2 hours (after which she shut it down). The next > morning, she booted up and found significant software damage&changes > on her machine. All of desktop shortcuts/icons moved to left side, > several shortcuts had been deleted, Windows 2000 was coming up with > the welcome screen as if it had just been installed, Microsoft Word > was now unconfigured like it had just been installed and Palm Desktop > was corrupted (had to uninstall and reinstall). She had no problems > of any kind prior to this incident. I first hypothesized a hacker got > into her computer whle it was unprotected but she said she never saw > the mouse pointer move or any screens change. So, I was left with the > conclusion that my attempt to establish remote control had somehow > done this damage to her computer. > Question: Has anyone had this experience and can anyone tell me how > to 1) establish remote control and 2) prevent this damage to her > computer in the future? I am looking forward to the benefit of your > experience. Thank You, Doug Boyd This could be a hacker (script kiddie) playing stupid, or could be a coincidental OS crash. I would ask her to scan her machine with appropriate antivirus and malware application(s). Good luck. -- Regards, Mick _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list VNC-List@realvnc.com To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
