Please have a look at the warnings in the comments:
Rustdesk looks good on the outside, but if you look inside, it has a really bad codebase and has done some sketchy stuff in the past.
Last year, it installed custom root certificates as trusted on windows, which is a huge security risk: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/6444
On linux systems, it forced its own autostart with no option to disable this behavior: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/issues/4863
In the past, when it didn’t have Wayland support yet, it edited your GDM config and just disabled wayland: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/1.1.9/src/platform/linux.rs#L411-L422
Furthermore, the code quality is really bad. 90% of the linux platform-dependant code is just executing shell commands and parsing their output, while the same could be achieved in a safe way with proper rust builtins: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/master/src/platform/linux.rs
While I agree that Rustdesk works pretty flawlessly, the codebase and the behavior of the developers made me distrust the software and I don’t recommend using it.
@petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de you might want to add that warning to the post.
They also tried to submit the app to Flathub, but had way too broad permissions with no explanation why. “Users expect filesystem access” etc. In the end it was rejected and they publish a .flatpak file themselves.
https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/5233
The other points are far worse though.
To add on:
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There is no transparency about who is behind it. It just a Github account called “Rustdesk.” It could be a real company in Singapore or it could be some guy in China as people have speculated.
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The Rustdesk software needs way more permissions than necessary. This became evident with the flatpak as they did sandbox escapes which prevented them from being on flathub
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The Rustdesk distribution is entirely centralize release server run by Rustdesk. They could easily push out malware to lots of devices.
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They have done some sketchy things in the past. One of the things they did was quietly switch Linux desktops back to X11.
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The Rustdesk system is not terribly resistant to brute forcing. The weak password means they someone could try every combination.
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Rustdesk docker deployment docker compose exposes all ports on the host. This is minor but it could lead to a sandbox excape.
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Rustdesk servers keep getting hosted in countries that have freedom problems such as China and Russia.
Wow, I’m wondering how anyone would trust this software. It literally exposes your desktop. To me that requires top-tier trust level, i.e. nothing sketchy at all.
could be some guy in China
I don’t see how that’s a problem, it’s not like it’s by a Chinese run company or like the Chinese government is spying on you; in the case you described it’d just be a rando with a hobby/vision.
The fact that it keeps getting hosted in countries that have freedom problems, such as China and Russia, does concern me, though.
The problem is that China makes developing privacy and freedom friendly tech illegal. You won’t find many Tor devs in China
Really sad about this, because Rust Desk has been the absolute best remote access tool I’ve ever used in the IT world, and that includes many different professional tools like Ninja& Teamviewer.
It’s so clean, easy to install and run, fast and low latency, handles multi-monitors great, runs on mobile, Linux, Windows, etc.
Such a shame that it is mired in controversy.
Wth is that, that is the most anti-idiomatic code I have ever seen
https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/master/src%2Fplatform%2Flinux.rs#L176
pub fn get_cursor() -> ResultType<Option<u64>> {
let mut res = None;
DISPLAY.with(|conn| {
if let Ok(d) = conn.try_borrow_mut() {
if !d.is_null() {
unsafe {
let img = XFixesGetCursorImage(*d);
if !img.is_null() {
res = Some((*img).cursor_serial as u64);
XFree(img as _);
}
}
}
}
});
Ok(res)
}
I’m not an expert but this seems wrong.
Yep, I’m not a Rust expert either, but this is pretty cursed. The comments on this post have some more examples of bad rustdesk code: https://lobste.rs/s/njfvjb/rustdesk_with_tailscale_on_arch_linux
DO NOT USE THIS
This is a massive security risk and they have had so much controversy. They also routinely delete Github issues and discussions that question them. To top it off they are likely Chinese run.
Maybe meshcentral?
It depends on what you are trying to do. You also could do something like Tailscale + TightVNC
Meshcentral is discontinued because it was based on Intel ME (official program completely sucks) and when the dev was fired by Intel, he obviously lost any interest in the thing. All downloads even removed, only the source is available
HopToDesk. https://hoptodesk.com
It’s a fork of RustDesk.
Actually they seem kind of sketchy too. https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/2778
China bans encryption and doesn’t allow you to use anything to thwart surveillance. I can’t say I want that in a remote access tool.
China bans encryption
Most confidently wrong statement I have read all year.
Not really. At this point, you’re having to pick between two surveillance states.
Itsfoss is blogspam and often have many mistakes and wrong info. People should really stop posting links from them.
Wasn’t there some controversy about this that it wasn’t entirely open-source?
But why do you need a server for such a program? Can’t it be P2P or with the server stuff running on the client machine?
Theoretically, without the server, every time you want to connect to a peer you would have to figure out what’s their public IP address is, which can change. The server acts as a middleman between the peers so you dont have to do this manually, all peers only need to know the server’s IP address to connect to each other. The server is really only used for this initial linking up of peers, afterwards the connection is P2P (if possible, they fall back to a relay server if P2P fails).
I have setup a rustdesk server with docker, it was surprisingly easy to get started. It was for a friend who is managing the IT services of a small factory, the completely switched from TeamViewer and they are satisfied. More importantly their users, who are worse than your average windows user, found the transition relatively painless.
