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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."
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."
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.