ssh

ssh or Secure SHell is a telnet and ftp replacement. Standard ftp and telnet do not support encryption, so everything you type (including your password) is sent over the network in the clear, and a security breach anywhere on the network between you and the remote host would allow an attacker to see your password. This is especially dangerous on broadband and dorm networks.

Ssh, sftp, and scp fix this by encrypting the entire session.

ssh is available for unix systems, and is installed on most university systems already. Contact your system administrator if it is not.

ssh clients for windows are also available. A local mirror can be found here. The two recommended clients are:

putty: local mirror / home page

putty is a telnet and ssh client, superior to the telnet client distributed with Microsoft windows. It has the bare essentials its main window, with a lot of features available.

SSHSecureShellClient: local mirror / download directory

This is the commercial ssh client, free for academic use; this includes a ssh text window with lots of buttons around it, and a very nice graphical sftp client that is far easier to use than the normal ftp distributed with unix and windows.

ssh can also be used to forward X Windows if you already have an X server.