SSH tunnels for the common man (and woman)
Thanks to the fine folks at TUAW, I’ve been alerted to an interesting start to a series at Apple Matters called Using SSH: Secure Tunnels for the Common Man. There’s a nice bit of explanation on the need for and the basic concepts behind SSH tunneling.
Of course I’d be remiss to not mention Meerkat, Code Sorcery Workshop’s next application, built specifically to address the need for easy and feature-rich management of SSH tunnels. Even for folks like me who know the Terminal commands for SSH and the concepts behind rather arcane uses such as dynamic forwarding as a SOCKS proxy, it’s very useful to have menu bar access, Growl integration, Bonjour capability, and other Mac-like features for a classic UNIX tool like SSH.
However, I think that even with a tool like Meerkat, it’s important to have some sort of forum or knowledge base for various uses of SSH, which is something that I hope to start when Meerkat launches. It’s tricky because part of an SSH tunnel is inherently personal (e.g., your account details), but the basic concept can be shared for other people — whether it’s tunneling to your home iTunes collection, accessing your colocated Mac server securely via screen sharing, or securely browsing the web while on guest networks.
Anyway, give the article a look. I look forward to the upcoming installments — SSH is a dark art to many and it’s good to shed some light on it!
