MS Live Mesh

[Lazybones]

-   Lets you share/sync folders between computers as well as access them from a webpage
-   Enhances remote desktop

Now here is the scary part, it uses SSL and can tunnel through our firewalls. I was able to successfully share and sync files between my home and work PC and on top of that RDP into my work PC WITHOUT needing to VPN in first.. The RDP was a little slow but it did work.

I think this is a very good example of what an SSL VPN can do but at the same time it is a little frightening from an enterprise security point of view.

[Mr. Analog]

If you're new to Mesh, you may want to check out Microsoft's marketing PR page for it:
https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/overview/overview.aspx

If you haven't heard of Mesh before, it allows you to seamlessly share files between computers and devices as long as they have some kind of internet connectivity and you have a Microsoft Live! account.

This concept is one of the many expected built-in features of Windows 7 and is currently being "beta" tested on users who are willing to try it (again refer to mesh.com).

Certainly there are security implications to this and it will be interesting to see what the security response might be if this service was compromised.

Probably no more dangerous than using Google Office.

[Melbosa]

Well with RDP, by default, is already an encrypted connection, and you have for a while now been able to map drives on a destination machine to the connecting machine's resources.  This just seems like an extension to that functionality, incorporating Microsoft's sync engines and web publishing tools built into Microsoft OS's since XP SP2.  It is probably more complicated than that, but seems a logical connection.

[Mr. Analog]

Well with RDP, by default, is already an encrypted connection, and you have for a while now been able to map drives on a destination machine to the connecting machine's resources.  This just seems like an extension to that functionality, incorporating Microsoft's sync engines and web publishing tools built into Microsoft OS's since XP SP2.  It is probably more complicated than that, but seems a logical connection.

I'm sure this project is all about putting all this functionality together and making it "easy" for average users to play with. Windows has a lot of power but it's not always exposed well, making powerful tools like this easy will do well for Microsoft :-)

[Lazybones]

the thin is that it is transparently tunneling these services over https allowing it to pass through most firewalls with ease and almost zero configuration by the end user.