SSH and SFTP

[Patrick Clow]

Hello, I was wondering if someone could tell me if an FTP client with SSL can be used with SSH and Secure FTP. I'm not quite sure what the difference is.

Thank you

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Patrick,

Yes, I believe so.
We use psftp from the same folks that bring you the putty ssh client for Winblows.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Brian Bergstrand]

SSL is an encryption stream protocol, over that can run any other protocol like HTTP, FTP, etc.

SSH is a protocol that uses SSL for encryption, but it is a different protocol than FTP. The way I understand it, SFTP uses the SSH protocol to provide FTP like services.

What this all means, is that FTP over SSL is not compatible with SFTP. You will need an SFTP client.

HTH.

[Patrick Clow]

Thank you for the prompt reply.

Is there anyway I can use SSL to encrypt data being sent to and from my HP-UX servers via FTP?

Thanks again

[Steven E. Protter]

You can use any secure client with secure shell.

Search secure ftp at download.com or tucows.com and you'll find dozens for almost any OS.

Secure FTP uses encrypted passwords. Thats the central issue. Regular ftp servers do authentication in interceptable clear text.

SEP

[Patrick Clow]

Thanks SEP.

I should have clarified a little. We have purchased licenses for an FTP client that has security features that support SSL2-3 and our users want to conitue using it if possible.

[Brian Bergstrand]

You can install SSH on your servers and then use sftp. sftp can even be configured for easy script use by setting up keys and using ssh-agent (no need for passwords).

http://software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=T1471AA

I think this may be your only recourse, as I can't find a normal FTP client that supports SSL on the porting archive.

If you are comfortable with fixing/compiling source code, you could look at http://www.ford-hutchinson.com/~fh-1-pfh/ftps-ext.html and see if you could port one of the ftps clients listed there. A few of them say the support HP-UX.

HTH.