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SSH

In computing, Secure shell, or SSH, is both a computer program and an associated network protocol designed for logging into and executing commands on a remote computer. It is intended to replace the earlier rlogin, telnet and rsh protocols, and provides secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. X11 connections and arbitrary TCP ports can also be forwarded over the secure channel, and files can be transferred using the associated scp program.

The first version was written by Tatu Ylönen from Espoo, Finland in 1995. He soon formed a company called SSH Communications Security Oy to exploit this innovation. The original version of SSH used various pieces of free software, such as GNU libgmp, but later versions released by SSH Secure Communications evolved into increasingly proprietary software. SSH Communications Security subsequently relicensed SSH to F-secure Oy (formerly known as Data Fellows Oy). SSH Secure Communications has a USA subsidiary in Palo Alto, California.

The program is a common Unix shell program for client connections, accompanied by a daemon for accepting remote connections. Implementations exist for most modern platforms, including Microsoft Windows (where one of the most popular is PuTTY) and Mac OS. There are commercial versions, freeware versions, and open source versions.

A later version of the protocol was released under the name SSH2.

OpenSSH is an open source implementation of SSH. Corkscrew is a tool enabling the user to run SSH over HTTPS proxy servers. OpenSSH derives from the original, free implementation of SSH.

The GNU Project has its own implementation of SSH, lsh.

An IETF working group, "secsh", is currently in the process of standardizing the protocol.

List of implementions

• Lsh
• OpenSSH
• PuTTY
• SSHDOS [1] (http://sshdos.sourceforge.net/)
• WinSCP [2] (http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/)
• JavaSSH [3] (http://javassh.org/)

External links

• IETF working group (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/secsh-charter.html)

This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC, used with permission.