Network Programming in Elixir and Erlang

Appendix 5Controlling Other Machines with SSH

Secure Shell (SSH) is a protocol used to securely access and operate computers across a network.

It’s based on asymmetrical cryptography. During the handshake, remote machines sign some session data—shared with the client—with their private key. This lets the client verify the signature using the remote machine’s public key, which is a known key. This process is similar to TLS certificate verification (Chapter 7, ​Securing Protocols: TLS​). Optionally, the server can then require the client to provide a password to authenticate itself, or it can perform an inverse public/private key verification with the private key of the client. In the latter case, administrators or other trusted parties store ...