Windows XP Unwired

Secure Shell (SSH)

If you need to connect to Unix or Linux servers, you may be familiar with utilities such as Telnet and FTP. Telnet lets you connect to a command prompt on a machine over the network. The FTP utility transfers files between your machine and a remote server.

If you are using either Telnet or FTP to connect to a sensitive server, but you’re not also using a VPN, you are probably exposing your password to anyone who can access the network you’re connected to (perhaps you’re on a public network at a wireless hotspot?), the network where the remote server resides, and any network in between. (Ever wonder what networks sit between you and a remote computer? Use the tracert command at the Windows XP Command Prompt to trace the route between your computer and a remote host, as in tracert www.oreilly.com).

Tip

Anonymous FTP, in which you use your email address as a password, is not a concern. This is because, as the name implies, all remote users are treated as anonymous guests, and, if the remote FTP server is configured properly, are accorded no privileges that could be abused.

If the remote server supports it, you can use the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol to work with a remote machine’s command prompt (replacing Telnet) or securely transfer files (replacing FTP). SSH Communications Security offers SSH utilities for Windows and other platforms. Open source variants include openssh (http://www.openssh.org), which is included with the Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) distribution, a Linux-like environment for Windows. However, since Cygwin has a fairly big footprint, a popular open source alternative is PuTTY, a suite of SSH utilities that fit on a floppy disk.

PuTTY is available from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. At a minimum, you should download and install (put the .exe somewhere in your Windows PATH) putty.exe. If you want to perform secure file transfers, download pscp.exe and psftp.exe.

To connect to a remote host with PuTTY, launch the application, specify SSH as the protocol (the default is to use the insecure Telnet protocol), and supply the IP address or hostname of the machine to which you want to connect, as shown in Figure 4-14.

Figure 4-14. Connecting to a remote machine with PuTTY

The first time you connect to a remote server with PuTTY, it will advise you that the server is unknown to it (see Figure 4-15). Click Yes or No to continue connecting, and then type your username and password when prompted to do so.

Figure 4-15. PuTTY warns about unknown hosts

Once you are logged in, you can issue commands on the remote machine as shown in Figure 4-16.

Figure 4-16. Using a Unix shell over a PuTTY connection

You can use pscp (secure copy) and psftp (secure FTP) at the Windows XP Command Prompt. To copy a file with pscp, use pscp username @ host:path, as in pscp secret_document.doc [e-mail]:MyDocuments/.

To use psftp, specify the hostname, and log in with your user ID and password. You can use ftp commands such as put (to upload a file to the server) and get (to download a file from the server):

C:\Documents and Settings\bjepson\My Documents>psftp www.as220.org
login as: bjepson
Using username "bjepson".
[e-mail]'s password:********
Remote working directory is /home/bjepson
psftp> cd MyDocuments
Remote directory is now /home/bjepson/MyDocuments
psftp> put secret_document.doc
local:secret_document.doc 
        => remote:/home/bjepson/MyDocuments/secret_document.doc
psftp> get super_secret.doc
remote:/home/bjepson/MyDocuments/super_secret.doc 
        => local:super_secret.doc

For more information, consult the PuTTY documentation and FAQ, located at the PuTTY home page.