VNC via socks SSH proxy tunnel

I can connect to my private work network using Putty with the following settings:

• Hostname: login.example.com
• Port: 502
• SSH Forwarded Ports: D8888

This opens an SSH socks proxy which allows me to access internal servers. I again use Putty to connect to the internal Ubuntu server using the socks proxy above.

Now I want to get the server GUI using VNC, but I am unable to connect with the socks proxy. I tried forwarding the ports, but since I am newbie to this, I may have done it incorrectly. So how can I run VNC from my Windows machine to access the remote VNC server?

This article did not help me to connect using vncserver. RDP isn't working, either. The VNC session is on a different server accessible only from login.example.com as a socks proxy.

Note: I am able to SSH to the internal servers using the configuration above with the login.example.com as socks proxy in Putty.

2 Answers

If you're using the RealVNC viewer, as shown in the article you cited, then you should be able to do the following:

1. Use PuTTY to connect to login.abc.com and set the D8888 forwarding (which you said you've already been doing).
2. Start RealVNC viewer and click the Options... button.
3. Select the Connection tab.
4. Click the Use these proxy settings radio button.
5. Set Proxy type to SOCKS 5.
6. Set Proxy address and port to localhost:8888.
7. Now try connecting to the actual VNC server, e.g. vnc-server.abc.com:1. Don't use localhost:1, as you should be going through the SOCKS proxy.

Most VNC clients don't support SOCKS proxies so can't use the dynamic port forwarding (the D in D8888). You can forward a local port to a specific machine+port instead but it will mean one such local port mapping per remote system you want to VNC to. (This is in the article you linked to - it shows such a mapping to the localhost at the other end of the SSH tunnel). You then VNC connect to the forward port on your local machine and SSH tunnels it for you to the specific remote address:port.

Forwarded Ports: L8889 x.x.x.x:5900 (x.x.x.x address of machine you want to VNC to)

Some VNC clients do support SOCKS proxies but it tends to the paid / pro version.