Some Differences Between TLS and SSH

TLS provides end-to-end encryption on one connection. You are routing data in and out from one application. (Note, this application can be a tunneling utility, see Stunnel.) It authenticates the server with a certificate chain of trust going back to a root CA that you implicitly trust to sign identities. It can authenticate the client to the server the same way, or can keep the client anonymous. Many protocols used over TLS provide authentication, like putting up a webpage to sign in on for your bank.

SSH provides an end-to-end encryption for a collection of data channels on one connection. Each channel can be a shell, a pseudo-terminal, an application, port forwarding, etc. It is routing STDIN and STDOUT (and STDERR) over the channel for a command. (SFTP is just a command run in a channel over the connection. SCP is as well, but these days SCP is implemented in SFTP commands.) You may be connected to a shell and not realize you are running multiple channels over your connection. (You might have an ssh-agent channel over your connection. With the “-Y” option you’d have X11 forwarding in a channel or multiple channels.) It authenticates the server to the client by showing the human at the terminal a hash of the server’s key and asking them if they recognize it as being correct. (And we all just hit Y without looking. Ha ha. Just kidding.) The client user is authenticated (or not) by using a password, public key, or something else. (You can set up an SSH server to allow anonymous client access. A friend of mine did this on his text BBS; the connections were port forwarding to a telnet port where you’d then log in with a password.)

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