Remote gateway management page access

Question

I know that the quickest way to remote access a gateway is to open a port and using the external IP address, but this can result in a security issue, because anyone that can scan the port can easly reach it and try to access it. I used to manage the router using a Windows Server in VPN+RDP and an internet browser, but now I've replaced the Windows Server with an Ubuntu one (that is in OpenVPN, managed with Webmin) Does exist some Webmin tool or extension that can simulate a Browser inside it (so I can reach the gateway's IP and access the managing page)? Or a shell-browser that allow me to login, and open pages to change configuration, reboot etc?

EDIT: I found a tool named w3m that allows me to visit webpage, but when I try to login I get "Invalid Password" (but if I surf google.com I can search without problems, so text-input works ). Is it possible that my router doesn't recognize this "command-line browser" as valid (maybe the user agent) and block the login attempt?

Answer 1

Typically on Linux you would use SSH as a replacement for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). To prevent people from attempting to Bruteforce the machine you would use something like fail2ban which after a few invalid attempts would then automatically update the firewall to ignore future connections from that address. If you set it to 3 attempts and you choose a good password you should not have an issue :).

If you need to manage anything else you can use SSH tunnels to then simulate that port being open on your machine, then just connect to localhost (i.e. if a web management page you are trying to get to, in your browser you could open http://localhost) with the chosen tunnel port number and it will appear to the application like your machine is that application.

Lynx is a good Linux based text browser, but for most modern sites it won't be terribly useful.