50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The SSH book, April 3, 2001
There is a good reason why people write superficial messages on post cards: post cards afford no confidentiality and there is no expectation of privacy. The Internet can be compared to a post card; it is one large system where data is freely interchanged. While common sense tells us that post cards are open to the public, there is a misperception among non-technical Internet users that Internet data is kept private. However, nothing could be further from the truth; on the Wild West net,
all data is inherently open and unregulated.
There are solutions to this predicament. One solution is called SSH (Secure Shell). SSH provides a way to take that "postcard" and have it securely delivered by a courier.
In a nutshell, the book SSH, the Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide expands on two basic ideas: - Privacy is a basic human right, but on today's computer networks, privacy isn't guaranteed. - SSH is a simple idea, but it has many complex parts.
But the truth is that the need for privacy and security on today's networks is far too important to be encapsulated in two bullets. This book is so loaded with valuable and important information that anyone using or administering SSH should read it thoroughly.
As an introduction, SSH is a protocol that enables secure communications between computer systems that are communicating over insecure channels. SSH is more than simply a point-to-point encryption process such as a VPN. SSH allows users to authenticate themselves to remote hosts. After authentication, users can securely execute commands on a remote machine. SSH fills in for the security deficiencies that are inherent in applications such as telnet, ftp, rlogin, rsh, and rcp. The book also shows how SSH can be used to secure other protocols, such as POP, SMTP, IMAP, and others.
SSH was developed in response to the Unix "r" commands' (rsh, rlogin, rcp) vulnerability to attack. Some of these vulnerabilities include password and protocol sniffing, spoofing, eavesdropping and connection hijacking.
SSH, the Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide is everything you need to know about SSH and lives up to its bold claim of being a definitive guide. After an introduction to SSH -- why it came to be needed and its features and history -- the book goes into the core of the administration and use of SSH. The authors explain that SSH is in reality, not a true shell. The two versions of secure shell are SSH1 and SSH2; the book distinguishes between the two and describes when to use each version.
Chapter 2 details the basic client use of SSH. It shows how remote sessions are managed by the program and the various ways a user can authenticate to an SSH server.
Subsequent chapters cover the aspects of installing and compiling SSH. A myriad of different configuration possibilities are discussed. As the authors maintain, SSH is at its foundation a simple idea, but it has countless complex parts. SSH allows for a highly configurable architecture and provides both strong encryption and public-key authentication, but this comes at the price of complexity. The book allows an SSH administrator to understand the various versions and implementations of SSH (SSH1, SSH2, OpenSSH, F-Secure SSH, in addition to ports for Unix, Windows and Macintosh).
Chapter 9 provides in-depth coverage of a powerful feature of SSH -- port forwarding and X forwarding. Forwarding enables SSH to intercept service requests from another software program on one side of the SSH connection, send it across the encrypted connection, and then deliver it to the intended recipient on the other side. X Forwarding enables a user to securely run remote X Window applications by securing the X protocol traffic.
The authors demonstrate their extensive real-world experience with SSH throughout the book. The book includes many technical tips that could only have been obtained through extensive and widespread use. This attention to detail is especially useful considering the documentation provided with the free SSH implementation is often inaccessible for those without extensive SSH experience. Chapter 11 -- Case Studies, available on-line at Unix Review's book excerpt's -- details examples of real-world use of SSH. Two examples are how to integrate SSH with Pine or IMAP and the use of Kerberos with SSH. Anyone attempting such installations and configurations can attest to the difficulties involved.
For anyone who has had occasion to troubleshoot SSH, Chapter 12 -- Troubleshooting and Frequently Asked Questions -- will be a real boon. Many of the common (and some not so common) issues that have left many SSH systems administrators scratching their heads are addressed in this chapter.
For the SSH aficionado on a tight budget, the comprehensive SSH FAQ can be downloaded from various sites on the Web. For everyone else who needs to understand the often-undocumented inner-workings of SSH, this book is required reading.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for understanding SSH, useful for configuring it., October 27, 2001
I find too often that SysAdmins simply slap a pre-configured SSH onto their systems and do not truly understand how it works. Tasked with implementing SSH at my UNIX site, I found this book to be useful both in understanding SSH, and actually configuring it. This book is heavily weighted towards SSH1 and SSH2 and provides a wonderful amount of detail. However, I found it's coverage of OpenSSH to be lacking. I had to search the internet for a good deal of supplementary material to get OpenSSH working the way I wanted it to.
I truly enjoyed the books explanation of how a secure channel is established before login occurs. This explains the "magic" of the authentication process that is so integral to SSH. Its explanation of publickey authentication is also excellent. It helps you to really understand what SSH is for and how it can be used.
Examples are a bit too cluttered at times and are lost on the reader. I was also expecting a better explanation on how to "implement and administer" SSH at my site. For example, creating SSH packages and keeping known_host files updated. I have found the most useful information on these topics from various internet articles.
If you're truly interested in the inner-workings of SSH, I would strongly recommend this book.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good book untill you really need to put SSH to use, January 3, 2003
By A Customer
I bought this book several months ago because I was considering implementing SSH into a systm. Prior to reading the book, I had little understanding of SSH other than that it provides secure versions of popular tools such as FTP.
I initially read most of it during a cross-country flight. It was really good, and I came away with a good theoretical understanding of SSH. Now here I am several months later trying to actually implement it, and I'm not so pleased with the book. Infomation is scattered throughout the book. If you don't believe me, take a look at the index, it is online here at the Amazon site. As you are reading a topic, the texts suggests you bounce to another page, then another, and another. It's very confusing. Also, probably not so much of the book's fault, but there are a lot of flavors of SSH (both protocols (2) and implementations (many)). I find it very difficult to understand which material in the general text applies to the version I am using. There is a good index that does break down some commands and associated options / arguments by SSH implementation.
One good thing, though, is that I emailed the authors a question, and one of them actually responded.
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