How does SSH (secure shell) work?

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I’ve done research and I’m not sure if got the idea correctly. Is SSH used to remotely access the computers with encryption? Is it like how TeamViewer (connecting a remote computer) works?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

SSH is just an encrypted channel.

Generally it’s used for a terminal (command-line) but it’s also capable of “wrapping” ordinary services like web browsing or other network ports in order to become a secure “tunnel” to another system. It’s also used a lot to copy files between computers via something called SCP.

It replaces something called telnet which was a way to send command-line commands to a remote server but which could intercepted, modified and read by anyone en-route. Telnet died when we tried to secure systems, and SSH was a replacement with lots of extra knobs on.

It’s a secure communications channel between two computers, where both computers can verify that the other end is the computer/user that it intends to allow access to it, and where nobody in between is able to intercept, modify or read the data that crosses over that channel.

I use it to manage remote systems (“headless” systems, which have no GUI, such as webservers and the like) including issuing commands on them and uploading/downloading files to them securely, and I used it to tunnel communications to make them secure (so I can connect to my “insecure” home services remotely and access websites and other services that are normally only available on my home network – e.g. my router’s web interface, my NAS storage, my weather station etc.).

You can use basically any network protocol through SSH – in days gone by people would send desktop protocols like X-Windows (a bit like Teamviewer but 30+ years older!) through SSH to access desktops on remote machines, but that’s fallen out of favour now for more modern services.

Even Windows allows you to connect via ssh and run Powershell etc. commands now, and has an SSH client in it too.

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