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Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

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Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#21

Post by Maarten88 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #5

Title should be "Downloading Putty Safely Is Nearly Impossible" Don't most people install stuff in Windows through Ninite when possible these days? I know it has at least one SSH client. And in my experience, the vast majority of good software is at the top of any search query.

There is also the Windows Store. It has several SSH clients, free or cheap, one that is called Metro PuTTY.

I don't know if those are any good, but they are safe to install and run. In Windows 10 they will even run in a Window with your other desktop apps :-)

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#22

Post by lelandbatey »

hughes wrote: post #4

Putty is pretty awful anyway. Git for windows installs a shell that is not terrible, includes an ssh client, and is distributed over https. It is my go-to when I have to use a windows machine.

I agree. I find installing Cygwin, which installs MinTTY, is a much better experience, especially since you get normal ssh instead of a Gui-wrapped ssh.

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#23

Post by brians »

Someone1234 wrote: post #6

None of which would have mattered if Putty.exe was codesigned. Unfortunately it is not. Code signing certificates are insanely expensive. The cheapest one I could find from a CA was $73/year (3 year minimum). I could go on a long rant now about how much CAs are in collusion and how they're making everyone more insecure though their pricing, but that would be redundant as I think "everyone knows that" by now. Let's En…

The "browser" half of the CAB forum is happy to accept new CAs that meet their standards. Non-profits and disruptive startups are finding that difficult, as they should—it's hard to run a CA safely. It's not hard like curing cancer is hard, or even like heart surgery is hard. It's hard like avoiding iatrogenic infection is hard: it requires constant and diligent adherence to rules in the presence of no visible threat.

LE are a wonderful start, and they are succeeding in part because they're moving slowly. I expect them to go further, but only with full understanding of the obligations they take on by doing so. They're very, very right to be conservative in their operational practice, because they'll be allowed no more slack than anybody else, and maybe less.

Could something like LE have started ten years ago? Maybe, but nobody did. CAcert.org was a lovely dream, but didn't (and couldn't) hold to those standards of diligent practice.

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#25

Post by meritt »

mkr-hn wrote: post #5

Title should be "Downloading Putty Safely Is Nearly Impossible" Don't most people install stuff in Windows through Ninite when possible these days? I know it has at least one SSH client. And in my experience, the vast majority of good software is at the top of any search query.

Windows user for 20+ years. I've never heard of Ninite.

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#26

Post by baldfat »

hughes wrote: post #4

Putty is pretty awful anyway. Git for windows installs a shell that is not terrible, includes an ssh client, and is distributed over https. It is my go-to when I have to use a windows machine.

I switched to mobaxterm [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net] a few weeks ago. I am so happy with the program. It has some cool bells and whistles but it has built in X server. So it does X Forwarding out of the box.

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#28

Post by fl0wenol »

hughes wrote: post #4

Putty is pretty awful anyway. Git for windows installs a shell that is not terrible, includes an ssh client, and is distributed over https. It is my go-to when I have to use a windows machine.

It's actually including a subset of cygwin built with a fork of mingw, which includes the openssh-clients. It's the same as if you installed cygwin and used ssh from that.

That being said, when I'm looking for git and friends I like to go further and install more of cygwin to run the native port of rxvt and then run ssh inside of THAT.

So it's not really a solution for a shell in the way that PuTTY is, since PuTTY also is a decent terminal emulator for Windows. Not the greatest, but decent. It's the single-binary, run from a thumbdrive option.

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