Map a windows network drive via an ssh tunnel

We have know for some time the best way of mapping a network drive across the Internet in Windows is CIFS. Microsoft developed this protocol for this exact purpose and it works really well. Unfortunately early on it was chuck full of security holes that we exploited like nothing that ever came before it. As a result many ISPs have blocked the pots need to access the service through their network making it unusable for most.

The way to get around the problem and to make CIFS more secure is to use some kind of TUNNEL or VPN. SSH is very secure and efficient at making tunnels and we felt that it was the best way to make this great service usable for our customers.

The problem with port forwarding CIFS ports it to make them work one would have to disable local file and print sharing services, a deal breaker for a lot of folks.

You can port forward to a loopback adapter and solve this problem but it's one heck of a lot of work making this happen and way too complex for most computer users.

To solve all of the we created a very small program build on the .Net framework which does all of the following...

• Creates a loopback adapter
• Creates a ssh connection
• Creates a ssh tunnel for port 445 

This little program allows you to directly map a drive in Windows from a remote server via an SSH tunnel.

We have left the software unlocked and it can be used on any network. You can download a copy here.