Instant Support Without the "Man in the Middle"
Ben Erickson November 12 2018 06:00:00
"In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) is an attack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communication between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Now that we're in the "put everything in the cloud" era of computing, it's all to easy to take for granted that some services need to be cloud-based, and in fact are not possible or practical on-premesis or directly between two parties. This is the assumption I'd like to challenge with today's blog post. Instant support, sharing your desktop, screen sharing, etc, are almost always done through a broker nowadays. This is because of the difficulty of getting through the firewalls of both the support technician and the individual needing help. LogMeIn, TeamViewer, and GoToMyPC are a few examples of the most popular. But think about it: how well do you really know these companies? Can you really trust them with full, unrestricted access to absolutely everything on your computer? What you are doing when you use a service like this is intentionally making them the "man in the middle" and giving them the access for this kind of attack on a silver platter, should they choose to take advantage of the situation.
It's actually quite difficult to find and implement a direct "instant support" mechanism nowadays that doesn't rely on a third party or a previous firewall configuration, but at Trusted Computer Consulting, we thrive on challenges like this. And this is exactly what we've done. By compiling a custom build of ChunkVNC, we've created a small executable that you can download from our website that will connect your computer directly to a support technician on our network without any intermediary. We can then view your screen and help you with anything you need to get you up and running again. And all of this is done with banking-grade, 256-bit AES symmetric encryption and 2048-bit RSA key pairs so no one can eavesdrop on our session (one of the ISP's?).
So rest easy knowing we can help you in a pinch wherever you are- inside or outside your business network, whether you can modify your firewall or not, with the best available encryption, and without any "man in the middle". Give us a call today!
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