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Nubis Novem

Consulting On Cloud Nine

Tag: RDP

How to protect Remote Desktop Service with valid SSL certificate in Windows 2008, 2012, 2016

It is typical for a Windows server to have a auto-generated self-signed certificate for its Remote Desktop service. Not a good practice. Especially when RDP service is exposed on the internet (via TCP port 3389 that would be open in firewall). Here are a few simple steps to install a valid SSL certificate to be used with RDP to protect the host identity and encrypt your remote desktop sessions properly.

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Pinning a hole in Palo Alto: NAT forwarding of inbound TCP port

Today our challenge was to create a simple setup that is often called inbound TCP port forwarding, or, a pinhole with a more (or less) advanced firewall device. The network appliance for this cosmetic surgery was one of the recent PAN (Palo Alto Networks) PA-3000 series running PAN OS 6.0. First of all, do not do it. Again, do not do it. And again: please, do not create a destination port forwarding from external network interface into an internal or trusted network behind the firewall. There are other (proper!) techniques that would be better to use for remote network access, dedicated line or VPN (stands for Virtual Private Networking), for instance. Modern VPNs have little overhead and lots of security benefits. Though, for testing purposes only, we have decided to ignore our own advice which was just mentioned above for 3 times.

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