SSH

Unix users, you may already have ssh and scp commands. To find out, get a shell in a window and tryssh -V If you have ssh, try ssh -h 2>&1 | more and scp -h 2>&1 | more

If you don't have them, you should get them, and stop using FTP and Telnet to talk to computers whose security you care about. The risk is greatest if you or the hosts you talk to are on a shared network segment with a lot of untrusted neighbors who can see every bit you send or receive. Once you've switched, you should change your passwords on those computers.

Examples of shared network segments: cable modem service, university campus network, untrusted co-location environment.

OpenSSH is free and easy to install. You may have to get some libraries (zlib, openssl, etc.) but they are probably already present on your Linux or FreeBSD host.

If you can't install OpenSSH for some reason, you can get and install the commercial SSH. Install first ssh-1.2.30.tar.gz and then ssh-2.3.0.tar.gz which can be obtained from any of the "Official mirror sites" listed at http://www.ssh.org/products/ssh/download.html. Check ssh.org for security patches. If you don't install the old one first, there will be sites that run the old one that won't want to talk to your ssh.

How to use them

Once you have scp, you can replace your personal home page on petra-k by creating a new index.html file and going

scp index.html  name@pk.greens.org:.www where name is your login name. If that doesn't work, try scp index.html  name@pk.greens.org'#8999':.www The scp command on your system will prompt for your petra-k password.

To get a shell on petra-k, type

ssh  name@pk.greens.org or ssh  name@pk.greens.org'#8999' Try it with and without the '#8999'. We have both the commercial server and the freeware community's server listening on different ports. Whichever seems most appropriate at the time will be on the customary port 22 and the other will be on port 8999. If you have trouble with one, try the other.