this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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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.
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.
We need an alternative
Mesh central works well.
Not for all cases. It doesn't allow for two way connections and privacy controls