Are you serious about network security? Then check out SSH, the Secure Shell, which provides key-based authentication and transparent encryption for your network connections. It's reliable, robust, and reasonably easy to use, and both free and commercial implementations are widely available for most operating systems. While it doesn't solve every privacy and security problem, SSH eliminates several of them very effectively.

Everything you want to know about SSH is in our second edition of SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide. This updated book thoroughly covers the latest SSH-2 protocol for system administrators and end users interested in using this increasingly popular TCP/IP-based solution.

How does it work? Whenever data is sent to the network, SSH automatically encrypts it. When data reaches its intended recipient, SSH decrypts it. The result is "transparent" encryption-users can work normally, unaware that their communications are already encrypted. SSH supports secure file transfer between computers, secure remote logins, and a unique "tunneling" capability that adds encryption to otherwise insecure network applications. With SSH, users can freely navigate the Internet, and system administrators can secure their networks or perform remote administration.

Written for a wide, technical audience, SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide covers several implementations of SSH for different operating systems and computing environments. Whether you're an individual running Linux machines at home, a corporate network administrator with thousands of users, or a PC/Mac owner who just wants a secure way to telnet or transfer files between machines, our indispensable guide has you covered. It starts with simple installation and use of SSH, and works its way to in-depth case studies on large, sensitive computer networks.

No matter where or how you're shipping information, SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide will show you how to do it securely.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to SSH

2. Basic Client Use

3. Inside SSH

4. Installation and Compile-Time Configuration

5. Serverwide Configuration

6. Key Management and Agents

7. Advanced Client Use

8. Per-Account Server Configuration

9. Port Forwarding and X Forwarding

10. A Recommended Setup

11. Case Studies

12. Troubleshooting and FAQ

13. Overview of Other Implementations

14. OpenSSH for Windows

15. OpenSSH for Macintosh

16. Tectia for Windows

17. SecureCRT and SecureFX for Windows

18. PuTTY for Windows

19. OpenSSH 4.0 New Features

20. Tectia Manpage for sshregex

21. Tectia Module Names for Debugging

22. SSH-1 Features of OpenSSH and Tectia

23. SSH Quick Reference

About the Author

Daniel J. Barrett has been immersed in Internet technology since 1985. Currently working as a software engineer, Dan has also been a heavy metal singer, Unix system administrator, university lecturer, web designer, and humorist. He is the author of O'Reilly's Linux Pocket Guide, and is the coauthor of Linux Security Cookbook, and the first edition of SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide. He also writes monthly columns for Compute! and Keyboard Magazine, and articles for the O'Reilly Network.

Richard E. Silverman has a B.A. in computer science and an M.A. in pure mathematics. Richard has worked in the fields of networking, formal methods in software development, public-key infrastructure, routing security, and Unix systems administration. He co-authored the first edition of SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide.

Robert G. Byrnes, Ph.D., has been hacking on Unix systems for twenty years, and has been involved with security issues since the original Internet worm was launched from Cornell University, while he was a graduate student and system administrator. Currently, he's a software engineer at Curl Corporation, and has worked in the fields of networking, telecommunications, distributed computing, financial technology, and condensed matter physics.