This may be an odd question: How would I go about sharing my Linux box over the Internet, securely so that you need a username/password to get in, and have it act like a shared drive?
My first thought was to put an FTP server on it, but I want to be able to stream music and video off of it, as if it were a shared folder on a LAN, and I don't think that's something you can do over FTP?
All my searching on the Web brings me info about SAMBA, which, as far as I can tell, only is good on a networked LAN and not across the Internet.
I also thought of VNC, but the Linux box actually doesn't have an X server, and "controlling" the PC remotely isn't exactly what I need to do... just access it, as if it were a shared folder.

Any ideas what topic, concept, keywords I should search for this?
Thanks!