Need an easy way to Unlock a computer when you're remoted in and the screen locks.

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Need an easy way to Unlock a computer when you're remoted in and the screen locks.

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Howdy,

One of the pain points we have with RDM is unlocking the screen when you're already connected to a computer and the screen locks.
The only ways I've found to unlock the screen are:

  • Type my password in manually
  • Manually navigate to my personal vault, right-click my credentials, copy the password, paste it in
  • RIght-Click the session tab and choose Reconnect. Then wait for the session to go down, come back up, and it logs in.


What I'd like to see is an UNLOCK option when I right-click on the session tab. That option would then take the password from the vault credentials that are associated with that particular session, paste it in and unlock me. This would be a huge help.

Thanks.

All Comments (3)

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Hello,

Thank you for the request. We will have to investigate to see what we can do but unfortunately we're limited by what is allowed by the RDP protocol.

At the moment the best we could do is execute a macro, but macros can be insecure if typing a password, even more so if the user shouldn't ever see that password.
It's possible to make a macro already in RDM that would do this, but the steps when performing the action are just as long, if not longer, than the methods you're already using. I'm not sure it would save you time.

Regards,

Hubert Mireault

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SO, whatever method RDP uses to log me into the session in the first place can't be reused to log me in if the screen is locked? It's really just a Copy/Paste command that is needed to do the unlock. I was hoping all that woudl happen is:

  1. Screen locks due to timeout
  2. I right-click the tab and choose Unlock
  3. RDM would look and see which credentials are associated with that session
  4. RDM would go grab the password from the saved credentials and put it in the clipboard
  5. RDM would then do a "Paste" to put the password into the login box
  6. RDM would then do an "Enter" to submit the password and unlock the screen.


I'm sure it's more complicated than that but I'm hopeful a simple solution can be found. ;)

Thanks.

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Hello,

What you're describing is what I meant by executing a macro, the issue with that is that RDM can't know what's going on on the remote desktop side. You could be on the lock screen or in a notepad on the remote desktop, and executing the "unlock" command would perform the same command of:

  • Getting the password stored in RDM
  • Typing it in the RDP activeX control
  • Pressing "enter" at the end

Depending on the context, this could easily leak the password of the machine to a user who wouldn't have the appropriate rights. This is why we have warnings regarding macros in RDM—they can be extremely versatile, but you have to know the risks before allowing your users to use them.

There might be other avenues we could look into but it's not as simple as it seems due to security concerns and the limitations of the RDP ActiveX control.

Regards,

Hubert Mireault