PuTTY 0.53b main configuration dialog on Windows 2000
PuTTY is an SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP client. It was originally available only for Windows, but is now also available on various Unix platforms (as well as several other platforms as unofficial ports). It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham , and is open source, licensed under the MIT license.
The current version (as of April 2005) is 0.58, which contains several new features, including improved Unicode support, for international characters and right-to-left or bidirectional languages.
Prior to 0.58, 3 consecutive releases (0.55 - 0.57) were made to fix significant security holes in previous versions, some allowing client compromise even before the server is authenticated. If you use PuTTY and haven't checked the site for updates recently you are strongly encouraged to check your version.
Some features of PuTTY are:
- The storing of hosts and preferences for them for later use.
- Control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version.
- Command-line SCP and SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively.
- Control over port forwarding with SSH, including built-in handling of X11 forwarding.
Trivia
The name "PuTTY" has no definite meaning; according to the FAQ:
- [PuTTY is] the name of a popular SSH and Telnet client. Any other meaning is in the eye of the beholder. It's been rumoured that ‘PuTTY’ is the antonym of ‘getty’, or that it's the stuff that makes your Windows useful, or that it's a kind of plutonium Teletype. We couldn't possibly comment on such allegations.
External links