I have to admit this sounds like a pretty cool toy for Windows users (bla). Some smart guy has developed an app called GRC (Gmail Remote Command) that allows you to remotely control a PC by simply sending an email to your Gmail account. Once it’s up and running you’ll have Remote Desktop type functionality such as the ability to run applications, open web pages and shut down the operating system.
While I don’t know what the potential security implications of this method might be (Singe?) and I certainly wouldn’t do this on a production server – it sounds like it might come in especially handy for those little ‘emergencies’ or when you can’t get that stupid Windows Remote Desktop to work on your desktop at home.
More information and screenshots of GRC can be found on the Kolabora blog
1 Dominic White Feb 16th, 2007 at 3:52 pmHmmm, this idea definately makes me nervous. Now I can take over your machine with my favourite malware by sending you an e-mail instead of going through all the trouble of navigating firewalls, AV and the like.
Specifically the problems to me are:
* No authentication. Anyone can send you an e-mail, and hence anyone can control your pc. Using a secret e-mail address isn’t a good idea either, when I can send a million SPAM messages to a million mailboxes with the evil commands.
* No encryption. Gmail does a good job of redirecting requests to the encrypted version (https) back to the clear text version, this means most of your commands to your computer can be intercepted and modified anywhere along the long chain of e-mail servers.
* Remote control for Windows machines already exists in the form of Terminal Services/Remote Desktop and does a pretty good job of it too. There exist versions for Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm OS too.
That being said, we used to use an app called smegma to send commands to our unix boxes when we were locked out by the evil bofh’s.