What’s SSH?
Simply put, SSH (Secure Shell) allows you to connect to a different computer and gain terminal access to it despite not physically sitting right in front of it. SSH doesn’t give you access to the graphical desktop environment (normally, at least), but it will give you terminal access. That alone is a good enough reason to brush up on your terminal skills. Once you’re connected to the other computer, you can do virtually whatever you want, especially if you have root access on the remote user account.
SSH is most commonly used by port 22 to connect one computer to another over the Internet. The encryption technology used in the SSH connection is as reliable as the latest technology can make it, which makes it the #1 choice for network administrators.
Network admins normally use the SSH protocol technology as a remote control way of managing servers that are dedicated to their business.
How to Setup SSH
There are two main components when it comes to running SSH. One is the OpenSSH-server and the other is the OpenSSH-client. Clients of SSH servers communicate with the servers with the help of a secured connection.
While the OpenSSH-client platform is already installed in to Linux, the OpenSSH-server will have to be installed if one wants to receive requests from the OpenSSH-client.
If you are looking for a way to install both of them, you can simply run the command given below to get started:
sudo apt-get install openssh-client openssh-server
Basic SSH Commands
In a terminal client, an operator needs to run the SSH commands manually by using the following command string:
ssh -l [username] [hostname-or-ip]
For instance, if you want to connect to 129.45.4.3, with the user name “frodo”, you type:
ssh -l frodo 129.45.4.3
Once you’re connected with the server, you will be automatically prompted to give a password. Type the password you’ve designated and hit ENTER.
What Do You Use SSH For?
SSH can become a really useful tool if you have to manage multiple Linux computers — you can work on all of them from just one system. Even if you don’t have any serious work that SSH can help with, it’s a quick and easy little experiment you can try out for yourself. I always find it a little awesome whenever I send a shutdown command to a remote computer and then see the computer shutting down without me physically touching it.
Conclusion:
As mentioned earlier, SSH is an encryption method that makes it harder for hackers to sniff out passwords and other private information they want to protect online.
If the users key matches the one on the SSH server, access is granted automatically, while if the key is incorrect or missing, the SSH server asks for a username and password.
This makes SSH more secure as compared to its predecessor, Telnet.
Also, proper authentication is needed for users on the SSH protocol whenever they want to take part in any communication. This was not the case for Telnet users.
