Comment by Possibly linux@lemmy.zip on RustDesk: I Found This Open-Source TeamViewer Alternative Impressive!

DO NOT USE THIS

This is a massive security risk and they have had so much controversy. They also routinely delete Github issues and discussions that question them. To top it off they are likely Chinese run.

China is good though? At least that ensures they aren’t a CIA operation.

Not really. At this point, you’re having to pick between two surveillance states.

or neither, when cloosing open source tools worth their salt. in more and more fields such tools appear, fortunately

China bans encryption and doesn’t allow you to use anything to thwart surveillance. I can’t say I want that in a remote access tool.

China bans encryption

Most confidently wrong statement I have read all year.

Wait until people find out america bans certain cryptographic things to help them out.

As an american, the amount of people who refuse to accept that American Propaganda exists is staggering. I had an immediate reaction to seeing “China is good though” and I have no way of knowing if it’s justified because I’ve been my told my entire life that China is an evil shithole by American propaganda.

To take it a step further and say “America doesn’t have your best interest at heart” is deeply unsettling to the vast majority of Americans who blindly hand away their freedoms in the name of Freedom. Wait until people find out that our country is just like all the ones we’re taught to hate

Of course China uses encryption. So an obtuse, direct reading of that statement allows you, correctly, to say the commenter is wrong.

But what the commenter probably meant was “China bans the use of encryption that prevents the Chinese state from reading what is being exchanged” and that is confidently right. I’ve operated teams in China where we had a secret category 1 incident when it was discovered a couple of our devs had set up a VPN between a Chinese and a western service that didn’t go through the official Chinese-state controlled VPN services.

They absolutely do not want data they cannot read.

Do you have a source for that claim? And what state-controlled VPN services?

lol. I AM the source. DM me with your LinkedIn handle, I’ll connect with you to validate my identity and you can tell anybody else watching that the story is legit. I don’t want to spill too many details in public as I don’t want to involve my old company in it.

And in terms of “state controlled VPN” services, it’s not that the Chinese state runs honeypot VPNs for companies (though they most definitely do for their own citizens), but that to have a license to operate a cloud service in China, you have to enforce CSL and that means they get private companies, western too, to do their bidding. If you encrypt data, you’ll get a stern call (as we did).

in my book they are more of a risk than the USA. The USA already has political influence, for china to do it they need to use more extreme methods, like infiltrating your computer and use it and perhaps you as their tools

Just lookup “Rustdesk controversy”

it took you as long to find that link as it would have to look up the thing they gave you. this is not kindergarten, nobody owes you you their time. you are expected to be able to find and evaluate the validity of information yourself.

nope I had it bookmarked

I think you should click the link above

i can see what it points to. you can’t claim the statement is unfalsifiable just because you didn’t see the issues before removal. like, this is not proof-of-god tier stuff.

This. No matter how many downvotes you get for it. This all the way.

Sure, but RustDesk is not entirely opensource, there are key binary parts.

Is there a good, free, cross platform alternative?

depends on your definition of good, and free

This comment is helpful

Maybe meshcentral?

It depends on what you are trying to do. You also could do something like Tailscale + TightVNC

Meshcentral is discontinued because it was based on Intel ME (official program completely sucks) and when the dev was fired by Intel, he obviously lost any interest in the thing. All downloads even removed, only the source is available

Completely disagree. Meshcentral is amazing. I use it almost everyday. Sure it has some querks, and I am not a fan of the default layout but that is an easy change.

It is certainly not discontinued.

Yes Ylian (the developer) was laid off from Intel and later started working at Microsoft. But the project is still alive and well. (He owns the domain so he was able to keep the website alive. Another user (Si458) Has taken up alot of the development (30 commits this month ) and Ylian has also continued development although much less now he has a day job. (1 Commit this month)

The only thing that got discontinued was the publicly hosted server of MC. That was costing to much and it required to much maintenance now this became a side project. So you will need to self host it now.

I was searching for a binary 6 months ago and they were all removed. The website is still offline

You can download everything here. https://meshcentral.com/downloads.html

~~But to your point https://www.meshcentral.com (That is linked in the Github page give me a certificate error. Guess they need to fix that lol) But https://meshcentral.com (without the www) works.~~

Github page has been fixed!

Tail scale and sunshine/moonlight would work

HopToDesk. https://hoptodesk.com

It’s a fork of RustDesk.

Actually they seem kind of sketchy too. https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/2778

How do they improve on security and privacy ?

That’s the neat part; they don’t!

Rustdesk but even more sketchy

I personally use nomachine, and tailscale for VPN access. Genuinely no complaints, it kinda “just works”.

I use DWService. Now everyone go ahead and tell me why I’m stupid.

I had the impression that it has a Russian connection, but anyways, it’s good to be in the lookout for such things

What?

Rust doesn’t solve all security issues in codebase?

People should take note of that; I surely did…

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