You probably already know how to use SSH to securely log in toremote hosts over the Web. In this article, take things a little further byusing SSH to encrypt connections to other ports as well. Scenarios coveredinclude securing your mail server connection so that your mail password isalways protected and creating secure pathways through firewalls for trustedhosts.
And that's about it for the moment. In this article, I introduced you to OpenSSH, a free open-source implementation of the SSH protocol. After a quick crash course in installing and configuring SSH, I took you through the process of creating a key pair, and using it to securely connect to other hosts. With the basics out of the way, I then moved to the main focus of this article - using SSH to create secure tunnels between ports on different hosts, in an effort to add greater security to the data packets traveling across a network. I walked you through a number of possible scenarios for this capability, including securing your connection to your incoming mail server via local port forwarding, and creating secure channels for hosts outside your firewall to communicate with hosts inside it via remote port forwarding.
In case you'd like to read more about the capabilities and technologies discussed in this article, you should take a look at the following Web sites:
I hope you enjoyed this article, and that you found the information in it useful in securing your network. Till next time...stay healthy!
Note: Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. Melonfire provides no warranties or support for the source code described in this article. YMMV!
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