putty/doc
Simon Tatham 22b492c4f6 New protocol: PROT_SSHCONN, bare ssh-connection.
This is the same protocol that PuTTY's connection sharing has been
using for years, to communicate between the downstream and upstream
PuTTYs. I'm now promoting it to be a first-class member of the
protocols list: if you have a server for it, you can select it in the
GUI or on the command line, and write out a saved session that
specifies it.

This would be completely insecure if you used it as an ordinary
network protocol, of course. Not only is it non-cryptographic and wide
open to eavesdropping and hijacking, but it's not even _authenticated_
- it begins after the userauth phase of SSH. So there isn't even the
mild security theatre of entering an easy-to-eavesdrop password, as
there is with, say, Telnet.

However, that's not what I want to use it for. My aim is to use it for
various specialist and niche purposes, all of which involve speaking
it over an 8-bit-clean data channel that is already set up, secured
and authenticated by other methods. There are lots of examples of such
channels:

 - a userv(1) invocation
 - the console of a UML kernel
 - the stdio channels into other kinds of container, such as Docker
 - the 'adb shell' channel (although it seems quite hard to run a
   custom binary at the far end of that)
 - a pair of pipes between PuTTY and a Cygwin helper process
 - and so on.

So this protocol is intended as a convenient way to get a client at
one end of any those to run a shell session at the other end. Unlike
other approaches, it will give you all the SSH-flavoured amenities
you're already used to, like forwarding your SSH agent into the
container, or forwarding selected network ports in or out of it, or
letting it open a window on your X server, or doing SCP/SFTP style
file transfer.

Of course another way to get all those amenities would be to run an
ordinary SSH server over the same channel - but this approach avoids
having to manage a phony password or authentication key, or taking up
your CPU time with pointless crypto.
2020-02-22 18:42:13 +00:00
..
Makefile Stop shipping old WinHelp (.HLP) file. 2019-03-16 12:25:23 +00:00
blurb.but Acknowledge Unix pageant. 2019-03-18 23:09:24 +00:00
chm.css
config.but New protocol: PROT_SSHCONN, bare ssh-connection. 2020-02-22 18:42:13 +00:00
errors.but Whitespace rationalisation of entire code base. 2019-09-08 20:29:21 +01:00
faq.but Whitespace rationalisation of entire code base. 2019-09-08 20:29:21 +01:00
feedback.but Discourage unnecessary use of Secure Contact key. 2019-11-22 09:21:43 +00:00
gs.but Rewrite "Getting started / Logging in". 2019-04-19 12:08:31 +01:00
index.but Rewrite "Getting started / Logging in". 2019-04-19 12:08:31 +01:00
intro.but Remove references to "Win32" and "32-bit Windows". 2017-02-15 23:58:25 +00:00
man-pag.but Document new Unix Pageant features in 0.71. 2019-03-17 14:58:55 +00:00
man-pg.but Document Unix puttygen /dev/urandom default. 2019-03-17 15:08:37 +00:00
man-pl.but Man page documentation of sanitise options. 2019-02-21 01:00:44 +00:00
man-pscp.but Man page documentation of sanitise options. 2019-02-21 01:00:44 +00:00
man-psft.but Man page documentation of sanitise options. 2019-02-21 01:00:44 +00:00
man-ptel.but Switch chiark URLs to https. 2017-05-07 16:29:01 +01:00
man-pter.but Examples in man pages for '-fn' option. 2016-03-27 11:33:21 +01:00
man-putt.but Switch chiark URLs to https. 2017-05-07 16:29:01 +01:00
mancfg.but
manpages.but
pageant.but Docs: talk about SSH-2 before SSH-1. 2019-04-19 15:49:05 +01:00
pgpkeys.but Remove most traces of WinHelp support. 2019-03-26 00:27:04 +00:00
plink.but Update version number for 0.73 release. 2019-09-22 10:12:29 +01:00
pscp.but Update version number for 0.73 release. 2019-09-22 10:12:29 +01:00
psftp.but File transfer tools: sanitise remote filenames and stderr. 2019-02-20 07:27:22 +00:00
pubkey.but Docs: tweak PuTTYgen "public keys for pasting". 2019-04-19 16:02:59 +01:00
site.but
sshnames.but Cross-reference the description of winadj@putty.projects.tartarus.org 2014-10-21 11:33:33 +00:00
udp.but UDP: the 'mac' directory no longer exists. 2019-04-19 16:11:23 +01:00
using.but Docs: list SSH specials before Telnet specials. 2019-04-19 16:02:59 +01:00
vids.but Rework versioning system to not depend on Subversion. 2014-09-24 10:33:13 +00:00