15.4. Virtual Machine Graphical Console

VNC is considered insecure by many security experts, however, several changes have been made to enable the secure usage of VNC for virtualization on Red Hat enterprise Linux. The guest machines only listen to the local host's loopback address (127.0.0.1). This ensures only those with shell privileges on the host can access virt-manager and the virtual machine through VNC. Although virt-manager is configured to listen to other public network interfaces and alternative methods can be configured, it is not recommended.

Remote administration can be performed by tunneling over SSH which encrypts the traffic. Although VNC can be configured to access remotely without tunneling over SSH, for security reasons, it is not recommended. To remotely administer the guest follow the instructions in: Chapter 5, Remote Management of Guests. TLS can provide enterprise level security for managing guest and host systems.