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Wikipedia mentions that VNC is insecure here and SSH manual also has something about XY -flags. Which one should you really use to share the window manager?

By Unix, I mean that I don't use Windows but Debian and iPad -- but try to keep answers generic, I think platfrom -independent question.

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You should use port forwarding with VNC and ssh. Say, you have a vncserver with display :1 created at target host, then use:

ssh -L5901:127.0.0.1:5901 user@host

You also may add -N option to ssh if you need not a text-mode session

and then 

vncviewer localhost:1

The port to be used at server side to connect is 5900 + <display number>

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  • What is VNC really? For what it was developed for? Window-manager -sharing? Why is it insecure? Can you hit the insecurity if you tunnel the VNC -client with SSH? +1 for your input already.
    – hhh
    Oct 2, 2012 at 16:53
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    Originally it was developed by AT&T, if I am not mistaken, for the remote server management. Then they decided that it's a really nice thing to share with others, so it was never on sale as I remember. It is insecure when used alone as 1) developers did not put the effort into strong authentication; 2) the data transferred is not encrypted, so someone may eavesdrop that you are doing. When you run it tunel'ed with SSH the communications are going through encrypted channel. The SSH role in this case is data protection.
    – Serge
    Oct 2, 2012 at 17:13

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