Terminal-based Remote Access

As of May 2000, insecure access (telnet, ftp, rsh/rcp) to department machines from outside the department has been blocked. Please see the announcement for more details. Secure Shell (SSH) is now the preferred method for terminal-based remote connections.

When you remotely login to department computers, you should always use a secure connection of some sort. Most UNIX and Mac OSX systems have a Secure Shell program (ssh) installed; solutions for Windows systems are also avaliable. A Secure Shell program is the functional equivalent of telnet or rlogin, but with several advanced features. Most importantly, it provides an encrypted connection between the two machines, making eavesdropping and session hijacking impossible. It also provides X display forwarding, provided you have an X-server running on your local machine. Likewise, it can also provide arbitrary port tunneling between machines, providing a secure connection for any service.

Secure Shells programs also provide secure file-transfer capability, via the sftp (Secure FTP) or scp (Secure Copy) commands. These are secure replacements for the insecure services ftp and rcp.

Secure Shell clients for Windows

SSH Communications Security
This commercial product, which is free for non-commercial purposes, includes sftp capability, and is recommended by the C.S. Lab Staff. It can be downloaded from the Duke OIT pages (Duke NetID required for download):
http://oit.duke.edu/comp-print/software/index.php
F-Secure
A commercial product, which can be downloaded from it's company's web site. Duke OIT also offers a site-licensed version (Duke NetID required for download):
http://www.f-secure.com/
http://oit.duke.edu/comp-print/software/index.php

Secure Shell clients for Macintosh

NiftyTelnet 1.1 SSH r3
This is an enhanced version of Chris Newman's NiftyTelnet 1.1 application which adds support for encrypted terminal sessions using the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol. This version also has support for SCP (Secure Copy).
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jonasw/freeware.html
F-Secure
This commercial product, can be downloaded from it's company's web site. Duke OIT also offers a site-licensed version (Duke NetID required for download):
http://www.f-secure.com/
http://oit.duke.edu/comp-print/software/index.php

Secure Shell clients for UNIX

SSH Communications Security SSH
This is a commercial product, but it is free for non-commercial uses. It includes sftp capability, and is recommended by the C.S. Lab Staff:
ftp://ftp.ssh.com/pub/ssh/
OpenSSH
http://www.openssh.com/
Data Fellows (commercial):
http://www.f-secure.com/

Additional Software

FreeSSH.Org:
http://www.freessh.org/

If you have any questions please contact the Lab Staff.