Remote control of student PCs

[robinhood]

The blurb for LNM mentions remotes control of PCs for teachers. I have a server setup - but see no evidence for this functionality. Am I missing something from the setup?

 

Cheers for any replies.

[Dos_Box]

It just uses RDP (remote desktop). Nothing special there. If you want more you must use either VNC or a proprietary solution such as NetSupport Manager (my favorite)

[HodgeHi]

Is there anything that can view more than one pc at a time VNC like? and obviously the cheaper the better (free!).

 

Whilst on this subject does anyone know if the apple remote desktop can do this for the pc VNCs' (long shot i know) as it is built on VNC anyway?

I don't really want to spend £350 to find out i can't use it at work as i wouldn't use it anywhere else really (apart from home).

[MkII]

VNCon http://vncon.chronetal.co.uk/ does auto-switching and many thumbnails at once

[HodgeHi]

That looks great but unfortunately doesn't like ultra VNC

[m25man]

It's not free but it's reasonably cheap,

 

Andy Bray's AB Tutor Control

 

http://www.abconsulting.com/html/Tutor_Control.html

 

Works really well and you only pay for the number of tutor workstations you need.

 

Really helpful too.

[Ianto312]

However, from what i've observed in other schools, you need to make sure you have competent security,

when i was inspecting some schools in the north of England, i had to laugh when i saw that a few students had managed to find the Netop program, copy it into another directory and unknown to the Technician were using it on other students, although highly hilarious, a total breach of security and very disruptive, so although it is a useful tool, make sure it is properly secured, although generally it shouldn't be a problem

[Geoff]

This can also be an issue with VNC. Also watch those passwords. There are password breakers for older versions of VNC.

 

Also remember that any of these solutions are vulnerable to snooping, man in the middle attacks and traffic analysis. You are probably safe within your own site, but using them remotely over the internet (for example) without some sort of encryption is dangerous.

[Jake]

Currently we are using http://www.lanschool.com, though its by far from the cheapest

[Jake]

oops.. http://www.lanschool.com even

[NetDiag]

Lanschool rocks! It creates a great comedy exercise when banging kids to rights for playing games when used in comjunction with Axis network cameras! hehe! Now we are in the process of installing recording software to record their shocked expressions when they are told off via on screen message!

 

[flyinghaggis]

We're in the process of looking at monitoring software to allow the staff to view their classes. We've still not decided whether to just go for a monitoring application or to look into something more fully featured.

I've just looked at ABTutor and I'm really impressed with both the features and the price. In fact it's so fully featured that I think it gives the staff too much control. I dont like the thought of the staff being able to blocked network ports on PC's or setting up permanent policy changes on them to restrict applications and windows features. Is there any way to limit what functionality staff have in ABTutor as it would be perfect for what we want to do if we could chop out a couple of the options!

I'm just away to have a look at Netsupport School and Lanschool (both full and just the monitor) so post my thoughts when Iv'e been through them.

[dezt]

We are using Lanview 3, it does the job by using VNC.

 

Quite easy to use.

[SpuffMonkey]

We have just implemented ABTutor - and yes - you can define what the staff get access to do via the restrictions available on each classroom.

[bossman]

I have seen many kinds of monitoring software and yes most of it works a treat until, yes youv'e guessed it you hand it over to the teachers and they then screw it up by messing around with it. They are just bigger little kids when it comes to this kind of thing. It was reported that in some schools running RMTutor 3 that some members of staff were using for their own devious purposes. RM stopped this with an update but it shows what they would do if they could and then there is the security aspect if their password becomes compromised and the little darlings then do what they want until found out. Need i say more, i use omniquad version 2.9 and it does what i want it to do nothing else and my technician (webman) and i monitor the network and the kids.

[Jake]

Our Lanschool is setup so that each teacher can only control/monitor their own class. The only people who have full access to every lanschool client is us techfolk. This way the teachers cant screw anything up

[flyinghaggis]

I knew I had a bad feeling that ABTutor gave users too much power. Just found what appears to be a major security hole with it. If a teachers fires up an application on a PC and no-one is logged onto it (ie a PC sitting at the logon screen) then then next time someone logs on that applications pops up and is RUNNING WITH SYSTEM LEVEL PRIVELEDGES 8O

Launched word and with a pupil account and was able to delete every file in program files and access every area on drive C!

I think I might send the dev team and Email to let them know cause that's pretty scary stuff....

[ind13]

we've got lanschool at my place.

one of my fav features has to be the multiple remote control,

found it really useful for situations like the ks3 test, ie get into the room 5mins before the lesson, log all the machines in one go, start the testing software on all the pc's.

 

also really good if you need to install a piece of software on all the pc's in one room.

 

ive heard the next verison which is in beta, has white/black list for websites, also has application blocking,

 

as for security, if you look through the support tools there is a peice of monitioring software which will pick up all lanschool traffic across the network so you can find out if there is anyone running the teacher module

[flyinghaggis]

Dont know whether to laugh or cry! Just tried out Netsupport School and it's got exactly the same remote execute as system security flaw as ABTutor. At least it by default doesn't execute remote applications if noone is logged in though.

[Guest metalmonkey]

I personally wouldn't call it a flaw. There really is no other way. Unless you manually set the service to run as a specific user on each client.

[Jake]

I knew I had a bad feeling that ABTutor gave users too much power. Just found what appears to be a major security hole with it. If a teachers fires up an application on a PC and no-one is logged onto it (ie a PC sitting at the logon screen) then then next time someone logs on that applications pops up and is RUNNING WITH SYSTEM LEVEL PRIVELEDGES 8O

Launched word and with a pupil account and was able to delete every file in program files and access every area on drive C!

I think I might send the dev team and Email to let them know cause that's pretty scary stuff....

 

Have just tried this with Lanschool , and its not happening for Lanschool, at least if I am reading what you did correctly anyway. The teacher then broadcasting ms word, then when finished, a student logs onto the machine. Word hasnt opened, the kid has no differences than their normal login

[flyinghaggis]

I personally wouldn't call it a flaw

 

You honestly wouldn't call the ability for any pupil/teacher to remotely run any executable/program with full system level user level privileges a security flaw 8O I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one cause I see it as being a show stopper for any application we consider running on the network.

I've just tried Lanschool and they're the only one of the 3 products that has the sense to disable to option when nobody's logged onto a PC so they're looking like the best option so far. I've sent an email to ABTutor so I'll see if I get a reply back. It's a shame because I actually like ABTutor better than Lanview (plus it's cheaper) but I can’t risk giving it to staff if it lets them run programs as system and the ability to permanently block IP ports on workstations.

[flyinghaggis]

Have just tried this with Lanschool , and its not happening for Lanschool, at least if I am reading what you did correctly anyway. The teacher then broadcasting ms word, then when finished, a student logs onto the machine. Word hasnt opened, the kid has no differences than their normal login

 

ABtutor and Netsupport School let you run code on a remote PC when it's sitting at the logon prompt waiting for someone to log (Lanschool doesn't let you do this as the option is greyed out if no users are logged onto a workstation). The problem is that this lets you run word/iexplore/etc (and it runs as the logged on user which is system because it's at the logon prompt). You cant actually see the application at this point but the next user that logs on sees it on their desktop and is running it as system with full access to the computer. It's just as though you had logged on as a pupil and used the run as... command to launch that app as system.

I've just got a respnse back from ABTutor who have been able to reproduce the problem and are going to look into it. I'll let you know when I get an update.

[Guest metalmonkey]

I appologise, I mis-understood your comment as being the product running as the system user rather than launching and executing under the same access rights. To that extent, you are right. In this instance, they should have an option or registry hack to disable the rmeote execution if no one is logged on.

 

No need to agree to disagree. I agree.

 

I actually like ABTutor better than Lanview (plus it's cheaper)

Funny, I thought LanView was free.

 

LanView3 also has this 'flaw' by the by. But in it's defence, Lanview is not designed as a teacher tool - it's for Admin's only.

[MkII]

Great find FlyingHaggis - can't wait to see your reply - we're on the verge of buying ABTutor Control