Secure shell or SSH is both a program and a
network protocol for logging into and executing commands on a remote computer. It is intended to replace
rlogin[?],
telnet and
rsh[?], and provides secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network.
X11 connections and arbitrary
TCP/IP ports can also be forwarded over the secure channel.
The program is a common Unix shell program, but there exists implementations for most modern platforms, including Microsoft Windows (where one of the most popular is PuTTY).
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.
An IETF working group, secsh, is currently in the process of standardizing the protocol.
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