Rating: 
Summary: Truly definitive and essential for Unix or Linux owners
Review: SSH has quickly become the tool of choice for remotely administering a Unix (or for that matter) Linux computer, replacing telnet, rsh and ftp. This is for good reason, these tools can easily become security holes and it is much easier to keep one tool well maintinaed and secure than a number.SSH gives improved security, both at login and of the data transmitted between computers. SSH offers both security and privacy, rare things online today. It allows secure communications between computers. 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 earlier methods.
SSH was developed in response to the vulnerability to attack in earlier remote login and control methods. Some of these vulnerabilities include password and protocol sniffing, spoofing, eavesdropping and connection hijacking. Simply, it is the protocol of choice for secure communications between two computers across internet connections. Administering and running SSH can be a pain. As the book points out it is a simple concept with complex parts. It took me a good three or four hours for my first connection to a remote computer and another two to get SSH logins working on my computer. This book was an excellent assist throughout. It covers the three varieties of SSH (SSH 1, SSH2 and Open SSH), giving the differences and benefits of the versions. The book also shows how SSH can be used to secure other protocols, such as POP, SMTP, IMAP, and others. It also gives detailed explanations of what SSH secures against and, perhaps more importantly, what it doesn't secure against. It explains the key technology and how you can integrate your SSH connections into a Public Key Infrastructure. I also found the Troubleshooting and Quick Reference sections extremely useful, worth the price of the book on their own. It does all this in a straight forward and well written manner, covering all the details without treating you like a dummy. The book is extremely well structured and formatted, introducing topics in a methodical way. I had no need for the sections on various ports of SSH to Windows or the Macintosh prior to OS X, but they read well and seem to cover the topic as well as the other sections. So far I've used SSH assisted this book to connect between my Macintosh running OS X and a Linux host, between a Linux computer and a Linux host and a Linux computer and my OS X Macintosh running as host. While their were minor problems with each of these they were quickly sorted out using the information and troubleshooting sections of this book. In conclusion, SSH is not a simple topic and this book covers it superbly. I would recommmend it to anyone using or administering SSH. It's one flaw is that it can be a little heavy and hard to understand, though not overly so. I have therefore given it only four stars.
Rating:
Summary: A great book overall, a few flaws
Review: SSH, the Secure Shell: The Defintiive Guide is another great book from O'Reilly. As the name would suggest, however, it's not so much a meant as a tutorial or a howto as it is an in-depth analysis of SSH's workings, though the examples given could probably be used as the former. The first chapters of the book begin with a lookat what SSH is, a summary of its general uses, and the differences between the various SSH implmentations. It then quickly moves onto a number of practical examples, with explanations of both the 'how' and 'why' behind the examples. Some of the more interesting examples are those that demonstrate X11 tunnelling, key management, and how SSH can be integrated with other applications (such as PGP, for example). One of the major faults of the book is in the writing style. The regular switching back and forth between a conversational tone and a serious, technical one was something that I found rather annoying. But other than that, this is more or less a well-rounded and nicely written book on SSH, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this topic.
Rating:
Summary: A great book overall, a few flaws
Review: SSH, the Secure Shell: The Defintiive Guide is another great book from O'Reilly. As the name would suggest, however, it's not so much a meant as a tutorial or a howto as it is an in-depth analysis of SSH's workings, though the examples given could probably be used as the former. The first chapters of the book begin with a lookat what SSH is, a summary of its general uses, and the differences between the various SSH implmentations. It then quickly moves onto a number of practical examples, with explanations of both the 'how' and 'why' behind the examples. Some of the more interesting examples are those that demonstrate X11 tunnelling, key management, and how SSH can be integrated with other applications (such as PGP, for example). One of the major faults of the book is in the writing style. The regular switching back and forth between a conversational tone and a serious, technical one was something that I found rather annoying. But other than that, this is more or less a well-rounded and nicely written book on SSH, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: The best SSH publication yet.
Review: SSH: - A complex and hard to master protocol (protocols).
- An invaluable defensive weapon against several types of attacks.
- In short time, SSH will be the 'de facto' privacy standard for remote connections and transference. The Approach: Three extraordinary introduction chapters, clearly and well written, lead you step by step into SSH internals. Several clever graphics, and a lot of basic definitions makes these chapters absolutely self contained.
The rest of the chapters are carefully dedicated to issues related to implementation and use of SSH, and to ports to several Operating Systems. The Book: 540+ Pages well structured into 17 chapters and two appendixes.
Clever conventions, and a very useful 'Which Chapters Are for You' guide.
Plenty of 'real world' examples and 63 pages of special case studies. The Covered Protocols: - SSH1.
- F-Secure SSH1.
- OpenSSH.
- SSH2.
- F-Secure SSH2. The Intended Audience: Quoting the authors: " We've written this book for system administrators and technically minded users. Some chapters are suitable for a wide audience, while others are thoroughly technical and intended for computer and networking professionals." The Bottom Line: Being a computer security professor, I constantly assign to my students complex laboratory works related to SSH. Well, with the only help of this book, they usually succeed in their tasks and even improve the original projects.
It is a worthy book and really deserves to be purchased.
Rating:
Summary: Bit wordy, but good information
Review: The authors go into quite a lot of detail regarding how SSH works. I found this to be a very valuable reference for SSH. It helped to clear up a lot of the misunderstandings I had regarding SSH. If you're new to SSH and are looking for a good reference to make sense of it, this is for you. It's also very handy as bookshelf reference to come back to.
Rating:
Summary: Bit wordy, but good information
Review: The authors go into quite a lot of detail regarding how SSH works. I found this to be a very valuable reference for SSH. It helped to clear up a lot of the misunderstandings I had regarding SSH. If you're new to SSH and are looking for a good reference to make sense of it, this is for you. It's also very handy as bookshelf reference to come back to.
Rating:
Summary: The SSH book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for learning SSH
Review: This is a decent book. I suggest it for anyone trying to learn more about the protocol and the program. It differentiates different versions such as OpenSSH, SSH1, and 2.
Good examples and example configuration, pros and cons for taking certain actions, with nice reference to commands in the back.
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