If you need a Virtual Network Computing client for a Chromebook, such as the one manufactured by Acer, RealVNC provides a free one that is available through the Google Chrome Web Store. For details on the app, see VNC® Viewer for Google Chrome™.
When I used it to connect to a Mac OS X system, I was warned that the connection would not be encrypted.
Unencrypted Connection
This connection will not be encrypted. Your authentication credentials will be transmitted securely, but all subsequent data exchanged while the connection is in progress may be susceptible to interception by third parties.
That's not a significant concern for me when both systems are on a Local Area Network (LAN) I control, but I normally tunnel VNC connections through an SSH connection when connecting over the Internet to ensure transmissions are encrypted.
Chrome OS on a Chromebook contains
A Secure Shell
(SSH) client application. To access it, hit the Ctrl-Alt-T
keys simultaneously, which will open a terminal window as a tab in the
Chrome browser. Type ssh at the "crosh>" prompt to access
the ssh client.
Welcome to crosh, type 'help' for a list of commands. crosh> ssh
Within the ssh application, typing help will show you a
list of the available commands.
ssh> help connect - connect dynamic-forward port - dynamic socks proxy (-D) forward port:host:port - static port forward (-L) help - this host <hostname> - remote hostname key <file> - sets private key to use (-i) nocmd - don't execute command (-N) port <num> - port on remote host (-p) server-alive-interval <num> - set ServerAliveInterval option exit - exit ssh subsystem user <username< - username on remote host Note that this program can only bind local ports in the range 8000-8999, inclusive. ssh>
If you wish to encrypt a Virtual Nework Computing (VNC) connection by tunneling it through an SSH connection, you will need to specify a port from 8000 to 8999 as the port to be used for forwarding the VNC traffic when using SSH under Chrome OS. You can do so using a forward command such as the following:
crosh> ssh ssh> user JDoe ssh> host my.example.com ssh> forward 8000:127.0.0.1:5900 ssh> connect
Then using the RealVNC
client for Chrome OS, you can specify 127.0.0.1:8000
or localhost::8000 as the address through
which to establish the VNC connection. You could also have
used forward 8000:localhost:5900 for the SSH
forwarding command. The address 127.0.0.1 is the
localhost
address and with the port number of 8000 tells VNC to try
establishing the VNC connection by connecting to port number 8000 on
the system on which VNC is running, i.e., the Chromebook. Because there
is an SSH tunnel through that port, SSH will route any traffic to TCP
port 8000 through its connection to port 5900 on the remote system.
You will still get the warning from the VNC Viewer about transmissions not being encrypted when you tunnel the traffic through the SSH tunnel, but you no longer have to worry about the warning, since the traffic is going through an encrypted SSH tunnel. The VNC Viewer does not know that its transmissions are going through an encrypted tunnel; it only knows that it isn't performing any encryption.
