the enhanced tightvnc viewer, ssvnc, adds encryption security to vnc connections.
the package provides a gui for windows, mac os x, and unix that automatically starts up an stunnel ssl tunnel for ssl or ssh/plink for ssh connections to any vnc server, such as x11vnc, and then launches the vnc viewer to use the encrypted tunnel.
the x11vnc server has builtin ssl support, however ssvnc can make ssl encrypted vnc connections to any vnc server if they are running an ssl tunnel, such as stunnel or socat, at their end. ssvnc's ssh tunnel will work to any vnc server host running sshd that you can log into.
the enhanced tightvnc viewer package started as a project to add some patches to the long neglected unix tightvnc viewer. however, now the frontend gui, encryption, and wrapper scripts features possibly outweigh the unix tightvnc viewer improvements (see the lists below to compare).
the ssvnc unix vncviewer can also be run without the ssvnc encryption gui as an enhanced replacement for the xvncviewer, xtightvncviewer, etc., viewers.
in addition to normal ssl, ssvnc also supports the vencrypt ssl/tls and vino/anontls encryption extensions to vnc on unix, mac os x, and windows. via the provided ssvnc vencrypt bridge, vencrypt and anontls encryption also works with any third party vnc viewer (e.g. realvnc, tightvnc, ultravnc, etc...) you select via 'change vnc viewer'.
the short name for this project is "ssvnc" for ssl/ssh vnc viewer. this is the name of the command to start it.
there is a simplified sshonly mode (sshvnc). and an even more simplified terminalservices mode (tsvnc) for use with x11vnc on the remote side.
the tool has many additional features; see the descriptions below.
it is a selfcontained bundle, you could carry it around on, say, a usb memory stick / flash drive for secure vnc viewing from almost any machine, unix, mac os x, and windows (and if you create a directory named "home" in the toplevel ssvnc directory on the drive your vnc profiles and certs will be kept there as well). for unix, there is also a conventional source tarball to build and install in the normal way and not use a prebuilt bundle.
