This chapter introduces the implementation of the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol that ships with the Fedora Project, OpenSSH; how to confirm its installation details; its license; general details about OpenSSH; a brief overview of why we should encrypt traffic and how OpenSSH and SSH in general do this.
SSH (Secure Shell) is a network protocol that allows secure, encrypted data exchange between two networked hosts or devices. It is primarily used for remote access and configuration of Unix-like operating systems, including GNU/Linux distributions such as Fedora. The nature of Unix-like operating systems is such that the system can be configured nearly completely from the CLI (Command-Line Interface), whether the administrator or user is physically located at the machine, or from the other side of the planet. The ability to perform configuration remotely in a secure manner is paramount, and is why SSH and its derivatives are some of the most pervasive and common protocols found on Unix-like operating systems today.
SSH was first invented in 1995 by Tatu Ylönen , at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. This initial implementation is now known as SSH-1. Shortly thereafter, an effort was launched to make SSH an Internet standard under the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) guidelines.
This led to the development of an updated protocol, known as SSH-2 which was adopted by the OpenBSD team in 1999. Since then the OpenBSD team has continually refined and developed and server and client under the OpenSSH banner. Fedora ships with OpenSSH.
