Unfortunately we can’t cover every SSH implementation, but here are summaries to aid your explorations. Because SSH products need to remain secure, we list only products that are in active development (or at least have been updated in the past year or two) and that support the SSH-2 protocol. This means we’ve intentionally left out dozens of older SSH products with respected histories, like NiftyTelnet SSH for the Mac, Top Gun SSH for Palm, FISH for VMS, and Sergey Okhapkin’s classic Windows port of the original SSH1. Old-timers like these have their place in history, but have been supplanted by more modern implementations.
We’ve organized the products by platform. Some products are free and others are shareware or commercial, usually quite inexpensive. Additionally, many of the commercial products have free evaluation versions available, so you can try before you buy.
At press time, we have found no modern SSH clients for BeOS. There are a bunch of ancient ones (2000-2002) supporting the old SSH-1 protocol: search http://www.bebits.com/ to find them.
At press time, we have found no modern SSH clients for the Amiga. The closest is an Amiga port of OpenSSH (http://www.chernoff.org/amiga/, free). However, it’s a port of Version 3.0.2, which is several years out of date.
ssh.el (http://www.splode.com/~friedman/software/emacs-lisp/src/ssh.e l, free) is an Emacs interface for SSH client connections. It does not implement SSH itself, but invokes an external client (e.g., ssh from OpenSSH or Tectia) within Emacs.
JavaSSH (http://javassh.org/, free), a.k.a. Java Telnet/SSH Applet, is just what it sounds like: an SSH client applet.
JSch (http://www.jcraft.com/jsch/, free), a.k.a. Java Secure Channel, is an implementation of the SSH-2 protocol.
MindTerm (http://www.mindbright.se/, commercial, but free for personal or limited commercial use) is an SSH client and terminal emulator. The same company sells Appgate Security Server, an enterprise-level security product with SSH capabilities.
SSHTerm Professional (http://www.sshtools.com/, commercial, but free for personal or limited commercial use). The same vendor also produces Maverick SSHD, an SSH server written in Java; J2SSH Maverick, a Java SSH library for programmers; and Maverick.NET, an SSH API for Microsoft’s .NET platform.
MacSSH (http://www.macssh.com/, shareware) is the premier SSH client for OS 9. It supplanted NiftyTelnet SSH, which we covered in the first edition of this book.
MacSFTP (http://www.macssh.com/, shareware) is an SFTP client by the maker of MacSSH, for copying files securely between computers.
Macintosh OS X comes with OpenSSH installed. However, MacSFTP is also available. [13.3.5]
Windows SSH products have exploded in number in the past few years. Frankly, there are so many commercial SSH terminal clients it’s almost ridiculous. On the other hand, it’s nice to have choices.
Axessh 2.6 (http://www.labf.com/axessh/, commercial) is a terminal emulator and file-transfer program supporting SSH.
Ericom PowerTerm (http://www.ericom.com/, commercial) is a whole suite of SSH products for the enterprise.
F-Secure SSH (http://www.f-secure.com/, commercial) is an SSH-based terminal emulator.
Kermit 95 (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/k95.html, commercial) is the classic program and protocol from the 1980s, updated to support SSH by borrowing code from OpenSSH.
OpenSSH on Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/, free) is a port of the whole OpenSSH suite to Windows and is the subject of Chapter 14.
PenguiNet (http://www.siliconcircus.com/penguinet/, commercial) is an SSH terminal emulator and secure file-copy program.
Pragma Fortress (http://www.pragmasys.com/, commercial) is an enterprise-level SSH server.
PuTTY (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/, free), is a small but mighty suite of SSH clients covered fully in Chapter 18.
RemotelyAnywhere (http://www.remotelyanywhere.com/, commercial) is a remote system administration package that includes an SSH server.
Secure iXplorer (http://www.i-tree.org/, commercial) is a Windows Explorer-like program for accessing remote files. It is based internally on PuTTY.
Secure KoalaTerm (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/, commercial) is an SSH terminal emulator with particular focus on terminal emulation features.
SecureCRT (http://www.vandyke.com/, commercial) is a terminal emulator with SSH support, covered in Chapter 17. SecureFX is VanDyke’s secure file-transfer program with a graphical user interface. It is not an SSH terminal program.
ShellGuard (http://www.shellguard.com/, commercial) is an SSH-capable terminal emulator with secure copy capability.
Tectia (http://www.ssh.com/, commercial) is the Windows implementation of the major product we’ve been covering throughout this whole book, from SSH Communications Security.
VShell (http://www.vandyke.com/, commercial) is an SSH server from the maker of SecureCRT.
WinSSHD (http://www.bitvise.com/winsshd.html, commercial) is an SSH server.
WiSSH (http://www.wissh.com/, commercial) is a “remote desktop” program that operates over the SSH protocol, encrypting traffic between your local machine and the remote PC.
ZOC (http://www.emtec.com/zoc/, commercial) is an SSH terminal emulator.
PocketPuTTY (http://pocketputty.duxy.net/, free) is a port of PuTTY.
PocketTTY (http://dejavusoftware.com/pocketty/) is another SSH terminal client.
ZOC, the Windows client, is also available for OS/2. [13.3.7]
The only Palm implementation used to be Top Gun SSH, but it supports only the SSH-1 protocol and is quite old. Fortunately there are some new kids on the block.
pSSH (http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh, free) is an SSH client for PalmOS 5 and up.
TuSSH (http://www.tussh.com/) is an SSH client for PalmOS 4 and up.
Several free Perl modules (http://www.cpan.org/) are available that provide an SSH API for software developers:
- Net::SSH::Perl
An implementation of the SSH protocol, written in Perl
- Net::SSH
An SSH API that provides wrappers around the ssh command
- Net::SCP
An SSH API that provides wrappers around the scp command
- Net::SCP::Expect
Another wrapper around scp, this one supporting Expect (http://expect.nist.gov/) so that passwords can be passed to it programmatically
We’ve covered OpenSSH and Tectia extensively in this book, but there are others....
Dropbear (http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html, free) is an SSH client and server intended to run in as little memory as possible.
Kermit (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ssh.html, free), the venerable communications program of long ago, has been updated with SSH protocol support.
lsh (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/lsh/, free) is an SSH-2 client (lsh) and server (lshd).
PuTTY runs on Linux as well as Windows. [13.3.7] In addition, there is an unrelated program gPutty (http://www.defora.org/index.php?page=gputty), that is a PuTTY clone for the GNOME environment.
SecPanel (http://www.pingx.net/secpanel/, free) is a graphical, point-and-click manager for SSH client connections. It’s written in the programming language tcl and invokes SSH clients from your installed OpenSSH or Tectia distribution.
BAMSE (http://www.free.lp.se/bamse/) is an SSH client. It has not been updated since 2002 but is supposedly the best VMS client available.