SSH - Secure Shell

Summary: We recommend that you use Secure Shell (ssh) as an encrypted alternative to telnet and remote shell.

• What is It?
• Software
• More Information

SSH -- what is it?

Secure shell (ssh) is an encrypted alternative to telnet and remote shell (rsh), wherein each packet is encrypted from the source to the destination. This prevents your communications (including passwords) from being 'sniffed' while in transit, as is known to happen with traditional telnet and rsh. Using SSH insures that your data packets are only readable by you and the computer to which you are connecting.

Where can I get the software?

Web Based SSH Client

Requires a Java Enable Browser

Windows OS

• Datafellows F-Secure SSH
  A commercial implementation of ssh, formerly licensed by OIT for use at UCI. Maintenance on this software was discontinued due to low campus usage. Existing installations may continue to use the software, but updates will not be provided by OIT.
• PuTTY
  PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.
• Secure CRT
  A commercial implementation of ssh, licensed by OIT and several departments at UCI. For information on distribution and department participation, please see the Secure CRT License page.

Mac OS

• OpenSSH is included with Mac OS X. Apple updates OpenSSH along with general OS update releases. To use it, open the Terminal application and type at the prompt:
  ssh <hostname>
• Fugu
  Fugu is a graphical frontend to the native Mac OS X Secure File Transfer (SFTP) commandline application.
• dataComet-Secure
  A commercial implementation of ssh, site-licensed by OIT for use at UC Irvine. It can be downloaded directly from the Macintosh Archive.
• iTerm
  Freeware. Full featured terminal emulation program for OS X.
• NiftyTelnet1.1 SSH
  Freeware. NiftyTelnet 1.1 SSH r3 is an enhanced version of Chris Newman's NiftyTelnet 1.1 application which adds support for encrypted terminal sessions using SSH. It can be downloaded directly from Macintosh Archive. (download)
  Download and configuration instructions are available. Nifty does not support ssh v2 (Thu Sep 2 17:46:14 PDT 2004)

Unix/Linux

• Most versions of unix and Linux ship with a version of ssh. Fri Feb 4 14:15:58 PST 2005
• OIT' DCSlib clients can find copies of SSH for Solaris, Irix, Digital Unix, or Linux in:
  /dcs/packages/security/bin
• OpenSSH is a popular open source implementation.
• Putty is also available for Unix/Linux, which means a nice GUI for ssh'ing. Fri Feb 4 14:20:18 PST 2005
• lsh is a GPL'd implementation of ssh. Fri Feb 4 14:20:18 PST 2005

iPhone

An number of SSH clients for the iPhone are available through Apple's iTunes Store including:

• iSSH
• pTerm
• TouchTerm

Palm Pilot

• Top Gun ssh client - apparently hasn't been updated beyond protocol 1.5, as of Wed Sep 29 09:19:32 PDT 2004.
• TuSSH - does protocol v2.
• pssh does protocol v2 only, may lack appropriate entropy gathering on all but Tungsten C, arm CPU only. Wed Sep 29 09:28:31 PDT 2004

Java

• MindTerm is a both a standalone Java application and a web applet. Appgate offers a "free limited use" license for personal or limited commercial use.

SSH -- Where can I find more information?

More information about SSH can be found on the Wikipedia site, including lists of links to SSH clients:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

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