The ability to remote login into other computers has been a staple of computing for the longest time. From your command prompt on machine X, you can get a command prompt on machine Y and run things from that computer instead. Programs such as `telnet` and `rsh` (Remote SHell) would allow this, but they were not encrypted so anyone with access to the network wires could view your password or impersonate other computers on the network to violate the trust in the network. And across the whole internet it was just a risk.
SSH is the secure version, adding encryption but also adding a ton of features for a more modern age. Besides just getting a command prompt on a different machine, you can see the server’s “certificate” to ensure it’s the machine you think you want to connect to, it can be used as a simplistic VPN, and you can login using methods other than passwords like using SSL-style certificates where the client itself can present a certificate and the server could accept it as a condition of logging in. There’s even an included file transfer tool. Lots of other apps build on it for accessing other systems safely.
(I use the word “certificate” very loosely here because it’s not the same thing as what SSL uses, and there are no signatures from trusted certificate issuers in most situations)
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