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OpenSSH is Five Years Old

An anonymous reader writes "OpenSSH marks five years of its existence this week and a new round of internet SSH version mapping shows that it has over 88 percent of the SSH server market, according to Damien Miller, one of the developers. Read more."

22 comments

  1. Happy Birthday SSH! by lpangelrob2 · · Score: 4, Funny
    I would wish you happy birthday, but the authenticity of your server can't be established...

    To anybody who develops OpenSSH here on /., thanks for your hard work. :-)

  2. Thanks... by Sevn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For the awesome tool. Ssh, scp, and ssh tunnels are an integral part of how I accomplish things at work, and how I bypass corporate firewalls to use bittorrent. Thanks for the outstanding work.

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
    1. Re:Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I mostly use PuTTY as an ssh client, but I depend on OpenSSH for servers.

      I prefer a Windows desktop, but a Linux server.

      Thanks a lot guys.

    2. Re:Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any good online step-by-steps to get this up and running? I'd love to try it, but I'm double-plus-unsmart when it comes to SSH and tunneling...

      Thanks!

    3. Re:Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I clicked on your sig link in a meeting and of course my speakers where the whole way up. THANKS. It's what I get for slashdotting during a meeting.

    4. Re:Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my speakers where the whole way up.

      "were".

    5. Re:Thanks... by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 1

      SSH tunneling is really easy with modern versions of SSH and PuTTY, which can allow you to set up a local SOCKS proxy which goes through the SSH connection. In CLI SSH, use -D[port], and in PuTTY it's under Connection->SSH->Tunnels, set it to dynamic and enter a port (destination's not needed).

      Older versions of SSH and PuTTY can do "static" port forwarding, where you bind a local port to a remote destination/port.

  3. Blimey by Gaima · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one thinking "Is that all!"

    SSH, and it's associated tools, have become so much intrenched in my everyday life it's hard to remember a world without them!

    Thank you very much OpenSSH developers!

    1. Re:Blimey by mhesseltine · · Score: 1
      Am I the only one thinking "Is that all!"

      SSH, and it's associated tools, have become so much intrenched in my everyday life it's hard to remember a world without them!

      Thank you very much OpenSSH developers!

      I'm guessing that the OpenSSH project is 5 years old. I'm sure that the SSH protocol was in place longer than that.

      This just marks what quality developers can do given a standard protocol definition. Congrats to the developers.

      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    2. Re:Blimey by AT · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thats right. Tatu Ylönen wrote the original ssh program, which dates back to at least 1995. OpenSSL was started after Ylönen turned ssh into a commerical product and started to make the licence more restrictive. In fact, OpenSSH is based on the code for Ylönen's ssh 1.2.12.

  4. openssh is superb by mattgorle · · Score: 1

    Excellent tools.

    Once again, I'm in awe that so many people give so much high quality stuff away. (And keep it up to date!)

    Thanks for 5 great years guys, and here's to another 5!

    --
    Slackware user since 1997.
  5. Article Text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    For those who don't want to accept tens and tens of cookies to read one f'king page...

    OpenSSH marks its fifth birthday
    By Sam Varghese
    September 28, 2004 - 1:41PM

    OpenSSH marks five years of its existence this week and a new round of internet SSH version mapping shows that it has over 88 percent of the SSH server market, Damien Miller, one of the developers, said today.

    Miller joined the project in October 1999, just a month or so after it began, led by developers Markus Friedl and Niels Provos. Others involved in the project are OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt, Kevin Steves, Ben Lindstrom, Darren Tucker and Tim Rice.

    SSH or Secure Shell is a program used to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over insecure channels. OpenSSH is a free implementation of the program.

    Miller, who works for security services provider Netstar Networks in Melbourne, said the project had aimed at providing a free implementation of an SSH client which could be used by all and sundry who were looking for a secure way to handle remote administration.

    The project has had remarkable success and now OpenSSH is a part of every Linux, BSD and Apple system.

    When it kicked off in in late September 1999, the project began with an audit, clean-up and update of the last free version of Tatu Ylonen's legacy ssh-1.2.12 code.

    The project quickly attracted a portability effort and, in early 2000, an independent implementation of version 2 of the SSH protocol was released. OpenSSH has, since then, led the way in implementing security techniques such as privilege separation and auto-reexecution.

    Initially, there was rapid takeup by the free software community and within a year of OpenSSH's appearance, most free operating systems were shipped with it.

    Miller said over its five-year lifetime, OpenSSH had become the most widely used SSH protocol implementation by a large margin. It had been included in products from IBM, Apple, HP, Sun, Cisco and NetScreen. It runs on everything from mobile phones to Cray supercomputers.

    "The OpenSSH team would like to thank all those who have supported the project over the last five years, including individuals and vendors who have donated funds or hardware," said Miller. "An extra special thanks is due to those who have reported bugs or sent patches to the project."

  6. Excellent by r2q2 · · Score: 1

    Keep on rocking guys. I use ssh somewhat and it never fails on any of my systems. Its what the paranoid use to access their systems :-)

    --
    My UID is prime is yours?
  7. Congrats and thank you! by whyne · · Score: 1

    OpenSSH is a great utility and an example of free software development at its best. the openSSH history

  8. OpenSSH is great by gkelman · · Score: 1

    The great thing about OpenSSH is it compiles cleanly on Solaris, Irix, HPUX, HPUX on Itanium (on which _nothing_ compiles cleanly), AIX, Tru64, Linux, *BSD....

    Makes my life so much easier as I can get SSH up and running nice and quick. If only all major open source projects compiled this easily.

  9. Congrats, but be wary of monocultures... by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 3, Insightful
    OpenSSH is da bomb, and no mistake. The people who work on it are very, very good, and its marketshare is deserved.

    But even they have made mistakes once in a while. An exploitable hole in ssh is a worm-writer's dream. There aren't many sshds that aren't running as root...

    I'm kinda glad there are things like lsh out there. Diversity makes the bad guys' job harder.

    --
    PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
    1. Re:Congrats, but be wary of monocultures... by runderwo · · Score: 1

      It'd be nice if some lsh folks would join the real world and implement PAM. Ideological opinions about the state of PAM are irrelevant because at the moment, there is no alternative for ssh/ldap/kerberos/nfs/afs/whatever integration.

    2. Re:Congrats, but be wary of monocultures... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The LSH developers are completely right, PAM is junk. OpenSSH supports it by holding its nose and keeping PAM at arms length.

  10. echo.... by kayen_telva · · Score: 1

    I would like to echo the previous comments with a hearty thanks to the developers. OpenSSH rocks.

  11. Happy birthday to OpenSSH by roly · · Score: 2, Funny

    Happy birthday to you, OpenSSH! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip, hooray!

    Good work OpenSSH team. Free, and it's better in 99% of areas than the commercial SSH implementation from ssh.com. Keep developing it, guys, and keep up the good work!

    --
    "With Microsoft, you get Windows. With Linux, you get the full house" - unknown