TechInfoDepot:Software/PuTTY

PuTTY

PuTTY, running a session on Windows Vista
Developer(s)	Simon Tatham
Stable release	0.63 / August 6, 2013 (2013-08-06)
Repository	[{{#property:P1324}} {{#property:P1324}}]
Written in	C
Operating system	Windows and Linux
Type	Terminal emulator
License	MIT license
Website	Template:Url

PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet and rlogin. The name "PuTTY" has no definitive meaning, though "tty" is the name for a terminal in the Unix tradition, usually held to be short for Teletype.

PuTTY was originally written for Microsoft Windows, but it has been ported to various other operating systems. Official ports are available for some Unix-like platforms, with work-in-progress ports to Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X, and unofficial ports have been contributed to platforms such as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

PuTTY was written and is maintained primarily by Simon Tatham and is currently beta software.

Features

Some features of PuTTY are:

• The storing of hosts and preferences 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 (local, remote or dynamic port forwarding), including built-in handling of X11 forwarding.
• Emulates most xterm, VT102 control sequences, as well as much of ECMA-48 terminal emulation.
• IPv6 support.
• Supports 3DES, AES, Arcfour, Blowfish, DES.
• Public-key authentication support (no certificate support).
• Support for local serial port connections.
• Self-contained executable requires no installation.
• Supports the zlib@openssh.com delayed compression scheme (As of r9120 2011-03-05).

Version history

PuTTY's development dates back to late 1998, and it has been a usable SSH-2 client since October 2000.

Version	Release date	Release notes
0.55–0.57	-	Prior to 0.58, three 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.
0.58	2005-04-05	Contained several new features, including improved Unicode support, for international characters and right-to-left or bidirectional languages.
0.59	2007-01-24	Implemented new features such as connection to serial ports, local proxying, support for SSH and SFTP speed improvements, changes to the documentation format (for Vista compatibility), and has several bugfixes.
0.60	2007-04-29	Implements three new features and some bugfixes.
Snapshot r9120	2011-03-05	Added support for the zlib@openssh.com delayed compression scheme.
0.61	2011-07-12	Implements new features, bug fixes, and compatibility updates for Windows 7 and various SSH server software.
0.62	2011-12-10	Contains some bug fixes, including one security vulnerability.
0.63	2013-08-06	Contains bug fixes, including four security vulnerabilities, plus several minor new features. Code was run through Coverity scan.

Components

PuTTY consists of several components:

• PuTTY: the Telnet and SSH client itself
• PSCP: an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy
• PSFTP: an SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP
• PuTTYtel: a Telnet-only client
• Plink: a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends
• Pageant: an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink
• PuTTYgen: an RSA and DSA key generation utility
• pterm: a standalone terminal emulator

Gallery

• 

  PuTTY main configuration dialog on Windows

• 

  PuTTY 0.59 running on Windows, logged into a Debian system

• 

  PuTTY running on a Symbian S60 mobile phone, logged into a Mac OS X system

• 

  PuTTY running on Nokia E5 smart-phone, connected to a Ubuntu Linux system, with the Vim editor open. The terminal supports colours.

• 

  PuTTy running on Windows 8

See also

• Comparison of SSH clients
• SecureCRT
• mintty
• WinSCP
• Plink