How to Securely Connect to a VNC Server Over SSH Tunnel on CentOS 8

Previously, we created the user username. Now, we need to ensure that this user has permission to connect to the server via SSH. To verify this, attempt to establish an SSH connection to the remote server using the username account. If the connection is successful, the user has the necessary access; otherwise, additional configuration may be required.

If this works, you can proceed to the next step. If not, you need to either enable password authorization on the server, or configure a SSH key for username. See chapters SSH configuration and SSH key configuration in the Initial CentOS 8 Server Setup note.

Open the TigerVNC configuration file:

Uncomment the following line:

Restart the TigerVNC service:

Now it will not be possible to connect via VNC to the server directly from a remote computer, only via a SSH tunnel.

Now let's move on to the client computer.

On any Unix-like operating system, just open a command prompt and enter the following command:

Replace username with your login that was created in the first part of the tutorial. And TigerVNC_server_IP with your server address. As you can see, this is a usual ssh command. The -L and -N flags allow it to be used to create a tunnel.

In Putty, the differences from regular SSH connection are also not very different. You need to go to the Connection section, then SSH and finally Tunnels. Enter 62000 in the Source port and localhost:5902 in the Destination.

Click Add and Apply.

After establishing the SSH tunnel, you can securely connect to the remote VNC server. To do this, open any VNC client (such as TightVNC or RealVNC), just as you did earlier. However, instead of using the server’s IP address, connect to localhost:62000 — this forwards the connection through the encrypted SSH tunnel to the remote VNC service.