At the beginning of 2025, Cloudflare announced a new solution to allow the connection via browser to Windows RDP servers not exposed over the Internet in a totally secure way. Since Windows NT4 RDP has been the way to interact with Windows servers, but it’s always been an unsecure protocol. Exposing it directly over the Internet is historically a huge risk, and the only possible solution is usually to use VPN. But VPN’s are not always easy to setup, they require a client-server component that may be blocked in hardened laptops, and they use tcp/upd ports that may be blocked by firewalls. Using a browser is a much easier solution, and Cloudflare made exactly this.
I found around many articles about this solution, but many of them were missing some fundamental steps in their how-to guides, so as I spent myself half a day to implement it for my home lab, I decided to record all the steps I’ve done.