Shimo 1.0

VPNs are a staple of corporate life nowadays. They create a secure connection from your computer to your company's computers using a 'Virtual Private Network.' This allows you to access company documents via public networks in a secure fashion.

Cisco is a big player in the VPN market, and luckily for us OS X users there is a Mac client that allows connections from Macs to Cisco VPN appliances. Sadly, it sucks. The interface isn't Mac like, and while it works it doesn't offer up any nice features like Keychain integration or automatic reconnects. Enter Shimo, from nexUmoja. This little program offers up an alternative UI to the Cisco client that adds a number of features including Keychain integration, Growl notifications, and auto reconnecting.

All of this is great and as a user of Cicso's VPN client you would think I would use this without hesitation. Sadly, the whole point of VPNs is to make your communications more secure, and I simply don't trust a third party app sitting between my encrypted data and the Cisco VPN appliance. That's just me though, I'm slightly paranoid.

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Source: http://www.nexumoja.org/projects/Shimo/

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VPNs are a staple of corporate life nowadays. They create a secure connection from your computer to your company's computers using a...

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Dirk S

Does anyone have a suggestion for a VPN clients for the Nortel line? The Apani clients sucks big way.

Thanks

May 23 2007 at 11:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

kiltbear

Just a sanity check... ANY program you install on your computer could potentially look through data and send it back out to a hacker over some sort of background network connection. Know who you are dealing with!

Additionally, I would think it is highly LESS likely that something that calls attention to itself by directly interacting with a VPN is going to steal and share that particular information.

My guess is that Shimo does what #9 suggests, but in a very handsome format. Anyone look through the code yet?

NB:
As an IT guy I remind you: PLEASE don't save your VPN password in a keychain unless you have turned off autologin and turned on requiring passwords when coming back from sleep or screensavers.

May 23 2007 at 10:18 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom Robinson

Psshh! I don't trust any code I don't write myself!!!!!!!!!

May 23 2007 at 4:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sumsa

Since you still need to have Cisco VPN installed to use Shimo, you might also consider simply writing a small shell script for connecting (that would be like /usr/local/bin/vpnclient connect MYVPN user MYUSERNAME pwd MYPASSWORD), making it executable and then using Quicksilver to access different VPNs. Well, at least that is what I do. ^^

May 23 2007 at 4:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark

BTW for you paranoid people: it is released under GNU, so you should be able to check if it's harmful.

May 23 2007 at 3:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark

This works great! It uses all your Cisco client settings, so no re-configuring!

May 23 2007 at 3:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

joe

to steve: this is a solution for those who need to connect to a cisco vpn appliance, which 9 times out of 10 are setup on corporate (or in my case university) networks by IT departments. users generally can't setup their own vpn solution on these networks, and if you're setting up your own at home or a small business you probably don't want to use a cisco appliance anyway

May 23 2007 at 1:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve

Sorry, but if I want a VPN, I'll set it up myself. Otherwise it's not 'private' right? ;)

May 23 2007 at 1:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nissefar

Don't trust Shimo? Check out the source code.

svn co http://svn.nexumoja.org/Shimo/trunk Shimo

May 23 2007 at 12:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Herv頓.

If you don't trust a 3rd-party closed app you may wish trying Tunnelblick, based on OpenVPN: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16969

May 22 2007 at 11:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply