Installing a Free X Server on Windows XP

I needed to export X sessions to my Windows XP laptop, so I turned to Cygwin/XFree86. In less than 10 minutes I had am xterm from a FreeBSD machine appear on my Windows XP desktop. Here's how I did it.



  1. Download and execute Cygwin setup. The Cygwin/XFree86 User's Guide gives plenty of hand-holding if you need it. I selected all of the XFree86 packages plus OpenSSH. You'll see why OpenSSH was included shortly.

  2. Once Cygwin has finished installing, start a Cygwin shell, typically via 'C:\cygwin\cygwin.bat'.

  3. Within the Cygwin shell, start the X server via 'sh /usr/X11R6/bin/startxwin.sh' as shown below. You'll see an xterm appear.
  4. Within the xterm, allow the remote host to connect via X by executing '/usr/X11R6/bin/xhost 10.1.1.1', where 10.1.1.1 is the IP address of the remote host.

  5. Now use SSH to connect to the remote UNIX system. For example, 'ssh -l username -X 10.1.1.1'. Using the '-X' switch enables X forwarding, if it's not already specified in the SSH configuration file.

  6. Once connected to the remote UNIX system, send back an xterm by simply executing 'xterm'.

    I also sent 'xeyes' back to my system to show the sorts of graphical information that can be transmitted. It's as simple as that! All of the X traffic is sent via the encrypted SSH link, so you don't have to worry about exposing that information to the Internet.




If you're wondering how to upgrade the Cygwin packages already installed, this thread makes it clear that you only need to rerun the Cygwin setup.exe program.

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more