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Name: Rutaiwan
Status: Educator
Age: 20s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: June 2003
Question:
What is the Secure Shell (SSH)? What is a strong and weak points of SSH?


Replies:
Rutaiwan,

That is a great and I would like to offer my answer to you. SSH is used mostly in a Unix / Linux environment to provide terminal emulation to a remote machine. The main benefit of SSH is like you said is it is secure. Basic terminal emulation or Telnet communicates to the remote machine over an unsecured channel, meaning all information passed via the host and client is sent in clear text. If a person on your network used a network analyzer to view information over the wire they would be able to see what you are sending and receiving to and from the remote computer. With SSH if a person tried to view packet information with a network analyzer they would not be successful, reason being is the packets in a SSH session are encrypted. The only draw back with SSH is the remote computer and the host need to be configured to communicate at the SSH level. If there is a firewall that is in between the remote computer and the host, the appropriate ports will need to be opened on the firewall to allow communication.

I hope this answers your question.

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Joseph Noga

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