MeshCentral2 - Multi-OS User Consent Feature
In the last few months MeshCentral usage has been increasing a lot with increased activity on GitHub. Last week, Bryan Roe released the latest MeshAgent2 with many bug fixes and new features. This new agent is a major improvement over the previous one in terms of stability, but there is one feature in particular that is especially interesting.
One of the most requested features that was missing so far was user consent request. That is, when an administrator wants to take control over a remote computer, a pop-up prompt is displayed asking the remote user to confirm that this administrator is allowed to access the computer. In some cases, this is a very important feature in order to meet privacy and security policies. Since MeshCentral can be used in wildly different situations, the user consent system is configurable per device group. User consent can be used for remote desktop, terminal and remote file access and can be used along with the user notification feature.
Because MeshCentral supports a wide range of operating systems (Windows, MacOS and many Linux distributions) making a user consent prompt show up on all these operation systems is especially difficult. Sometimes it involves launching processes in different security contexts and much more. Bryan Roe was able to pull this off, MacOS being the most difficult. Because the MeshAgent runs as a system process, it’s a lot of work to get a prompt to show up in the currently logged in user’s context.
Along with these improvements, there are many more new features and bug fixes that have been made. Again, I want to give a big thank you to the GitHub community, everyone has been helping a lot and makes the project a lot of fun. Big thank you to Bryan Roe this week for the new MeshAgent and this highly required feature. This is result of over two months of work for him.
As usual, feedback is appreciated.
Enjoy,
Ylian
MeshCentral2: http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2
Twitter: https://twitter.com/meshcentral
One of the most requested features that was missing so far was user consent request. That is, when an administrator wants to take control over a remote computer, a pop-up prompt is displayed asking the remote user to confirm that this administrator is allowed to access the computer. In some cases, this is a very important feature in order to meet privacy and security policies. Since MeshCentral can be used in wildly different situations, the user consent system is configurable per device group. User consent can be used for remote desktop, terminal and remote file access and can be used along with the user notification feature.
Because MeshCentral supports a wide range of operating systems (Windows, MacOS and many Linux distributions) making a user consent prompt show up on all these operation systems is especially difficult. Sometimes it involves launching processes in different security contexts and much more. Bryan Roe was able to pull this off, MacOS being the most difficult. Because the MeshAgent runs as a system process, it’s a lot of work to get a prompt to show up in the currently logged in user’s context.
Along with these improvements, there are many more new features and bug fixes that have been made. Again, I want to give a big thank you to the GitHub community, everyone has been helping a lot and makes the project a lot of fun. Big thank you to Bryan Roe this week for the new MeshAgent and this highly required feature. This is result of over two months of work for him.
As usual, feedback is appreciated.
Enjoy,
Ylian
MeshCentral2: http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2
Twitter: https://twitter.com/meshcentral
