Chapter 14. SSH Shell

Table of Contents
Introduction
Menus

Introduction

Today it is recommended to use secure communications on public networks (i.e. the Internet). The secure shell (SSH) provides such secure communications, but it requires special software on the machines you are using. To avoid this requirement on the client machine, we provide a Java based SSH application. This provides an easy to use but secure way to log into your shell account with a very nice terminal emulator, all right from your web browser.

Important Security Note: The applet is susceptible to the man-in-the-middle attacks. We cannot avoid this. We can't even use the RSA based host authorization since the applet itself is downloaded from a remote host and might be modified by the man-in-the-middle. The only way to guard against applet modification would be having it signed with a trust certificate, but this is too expensive (in time, money, and development costs) to be practical. To summarize, this applet provides good security through encryption to prevent normal packet sniffing, which prevents the most common and easiest security attacks, but can not prevent more complex security attacks like man-in-the-middle attacks.

Note: This application requires Java. This version should run with all runtime environments that are at least Java 1.1.x compatible. If you are working with an older Java runtime environment (e.g. 1.0) please upgrade to a newer version.

Logging in

When you launch the SSH application, you will receive a window asking you for your login username and password for the remote host you are connecting to. After entering them, press the Ok button to login. When you are done with your login session, simply logout of your remote machine as normal.