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Windows Server 2003 SP1 will Add End-to-End SSL Terminal Server Encryption

Written on Sep 14 2003 8,560 views, 1 comment


by Brian Madden

LockerGnome is reporting that Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 will add critical security functionality to Terminal Services, namely, the ability for an RDP client to connect and authenticate to a Terminal Server completely via SSL over port 443. Service Pack 1 is scheduled to be released 1Q 2004, and Microsoft just recently released the closed beta for testing.

The LockerGnome article links to a article on Microsoft.com, but that link doesn't work anymore. I haven't seen the original article first hand, so I can't comment on specifics. However, Windows 2003's out-of-the-box Terminal Server client authentication mechanism uses the "standard" Windows authentication process. While this entire process can easily be encrypted, it uses more than one port which causes complications through firewalls. (Just for the record, pure 443-based connections are possible, but they require IPSec and other technologies that complicate the issue.) This SSL-based Terminal Server authentication will be a welcome feature of Service Pack 1.



Comments

Guest wrote "completely via SSL over port 443"??
on 11-07-2005 2:43 PM
I was very ecouraged reading this article, but it seems to be a dead end. So far I can't find any further information that verifies this. I have read about and successfully tested authentication through ssl/443, but the rdp traffic is still over port 3389.

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