OpenSSH 5.0 Opens Up

By Alex Handy

April 4, 2008 —  The various forms of SSH can be somewhat confusing. For those unaware of the flavors out there, OpenSSH is the free and open-source form of the secure shell, which allows users to remotely log into their computers with encrypted transmissions. Unlike its commercially named cousin from the company, SSH, OpenSSH is commonly available and used in almost all current Linux and Unix environments. This is the version that was updated to 5.0 today.

Unlike a commercial product, OpenSSH 5.0 is not a major feature release. This new version of the software was specifically built to address a recent security vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to hijack X11-forwarded connections. The problem was described to the maintainers of the Debian Linux operating system, but was not reported up the chain to the OpenSSH project. As a result, the release of OpenSSH 4.9 during the last days of March did not include anything to address this issue.

OpenSSH is a freely available secure shell program, which also includes the facilities to run secure FTP. The software is available for all major operating systems, and comes standard on BSD, Linux and Mac OS X. This is a recommended update due to the potential for compromising connections in previous versions through the addressed bug.



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