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Protecting RDP With SSH

Chrissy LeMaire has a two-parter on enabling SSH tunneling on Windows 10.  First, if you are using the Fall Creators Update:

Gotta say I’m super thankful for Chris K’s blog post “Enabling the hidden OpenSSH server in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709) — and why it’s great!“, otherwise this would have taken me far longer to figure out.

So next, Run PowerShell As Administrator, then generate a key.

cd C:\windows\system32\OpenSSH
ssh-keygen -A

Alternatively, if you are not using the Fall Creators Update:

First, bash for Windows must be setup. This requires Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016.

Note: this was written for Windows 10 pre-1709. Apparently, the new update contains a ton of changes. Developer mode is not required and you install your Linux distro from the Windows Store. Seems that it may even include Open SSH right out the box. I’ll test on Tuesday and let you all know. Till then, here is how to do it if you’ve got Windows 10 without Fall Creators Update (FCU).

Doing this limits the ability of an attacker to snoop on your RDP traffic.