SSH (Secure Shell)
- Date
- 1995 · confidence high
- Place
- Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
- Credited to
- Tatu Ylönen
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A protocol and program that encrypt the remote connection to a server, created after a password-sniffing attack on the university network in 1995. It replaced telnet and rlogin, which sent passwords in clear text.
Ylönen released it as freeware in July 1995 and founded SSH Communications Security; the licence became proprietary in 1996, which led to the free OpenSSH branch.
What it led to
- OpenSSH (1999), the most widely used free implementation
- SSH-2 as an IETF standard (2006)
- secure server administration and encrypted tunnels (git, scp, sftp)