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What is SSH?
What is SSH?
Next: Why Use SSH? Up: SSH Previous: SSH
What is SSH?
The Acronym SSH stands for Secure Shell. There are a couple of ways that you can access most Linux/Unix systems. The most common way is to use a telnet program such as the one called telnet(for Unix and Windows). Accessing a shell account in this fashion though poses a danger in that everything that you do over that telnet session is visible in plain text on your local network, and the local network of the machine you are connecting to.
As one solution SSH was created to encrypt the data being sent over the network as well as provide an option that prevents passwords from being ever passed over the network. SSH can use several different forms of encryption, anywhere from 56 to 1024 bit. SSH has been ported to Operating Systems on several platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.
The following safeguards are provided by SSH:
- After an initial connection, the client verifies it is connecting to the same server during subsequent sessions.
- The client transmits its authentication information to the server, such as a username and password, in an encrypted format.
- All data sent and received during the connection is transferred using strong, 128 bit encryption, making it extremely difficult to decrypt and read.
- The client has the ability to use X11 [1] applications launched from the shell prompt. This technique, called X11 forwarding, provides a secure means to use graphical applications over a network.
Next: Why Use SSH? Up: SSH Previous: SSH
2005-05-04