ITT: It's sketchy and will possibly mess with your Wayland set up.
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.
Rustdesk controversy
The whole discussion on that pull request is extremely sketchy, IMO.
To add on:
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.
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
The Rustdesk distribution is entirely centralize release server run by Rustdesk. They could easily push out malware to lots of devices.
They have done some sketchy things in the past. One of the things they did was quietly switch Linux desktops back to X11.
The Rustdesk system is not terribly resistant to brute forcing. The weak password means they someone could try every combination.
Rustdesk docker deployment docker compose exposes all ports on the host. This is minor but it could lead to a sandbox excape.
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.
Wow that's so sketchy.
Okayyyy… thats not great. I just read one of the threads and thats scary.
The person(s?) maintaining this seems to be VERY BAD at communicating. They did fix the auto start problem but did not at all discuss this from what I see. Thats not great.
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.
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.
What?
Rust doesn't solve all security issues in codebase?
People should take note of that; I surely did...
Source:
Just lookup "Rustdesk controversy"
it took you as long to find that link as it would have to look up the thing they gave you. this is not kindergarten, nobody owes you you their time. you are expected to be able to find and evaluate the validity of information yourself.
nope I had it bookmarked
This. No matter how many downvotes you get for it. This all the way.
China is good though? At least that ensures they aren't a CIA operation.
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.
Wait until people find out america bans certain cryptographic things to help them out.
As an american, the amount of people who refuse to accept that American Propaganda exists is staggering. I had an immediate reaction to seeing "China is good though" and I have no way of knowing if it's justified because I've been my told my entire life that China is an evil shithole by American propaganda.
To take it a step further and say "America doesn't have your best interest at heart" is deeply unsettling to the vast majority of Americans who blindly hand away their freedoms in the name of Freedom. Wait until people find out that our country is just like all the ones we're taught to hate
Not really. At this point, you're having to pick between two surveillance states.
Is there a good, free, cross platform alternative?
Tail scale and sunshine/moonlight would work
HopToDesk. https://hoptodesk.com
It's a fork of RustDesk.
Rustdesk but even more sketchy
Maybe meshcentral?
It depends on what you are trying to do. You also could do something like Tailscale + TightVNC
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?
they have a pro server with more features that’s closed source and paid
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.
I self-host my own rustdesk server and it's awesome. It just works flawlessly.
Yeah it's pretty awesome. My only gripe with it is the fact that it is super annoying when you want to send a client with your self-hosted urls to a customer.
You can either awkardly add it to the filename or you need to fork the client and build it yourself. Kind of sucks that the easier custom client function is stuck behind their subscription.
authentication is also stuck behind their subscription. for random customers to be able to use your servers, you also have to let everyone else on the internet use it.
I tried it and it's works exactly like Anydesk, except it's 5 times slower than Anydesk at least that's on their server, I know I can host it myself but I don't think I have the skill to set it up
It works very well and there is no speed difference at all. Of course you wont ever get anything worth in life without either putting in the work or paying either with money or your privacy.
I always neglected it because of its name. I thought it's something for rust...
Yeah I had my eye on this a few months back when I was looking for a FOSS windows Remote Desktop alternative. Between the security issues, and generally struggle to get it working well, I eventually went to a sunshine/moonlight combo for shockingly high performance screen sharing that can even handle basic gaming if need be.
I've been using MeshCentral lately, it does the job but the UI leaves something to be desired.
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