PuTTY supports many variations on the secure remote terminal, and provides user control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version, alternate ciphers such as AES, 3DES, RC4, Blowfish, DES, and public-key authentication. PuTTY uses its own format of key files – PPK (protected by Message Authentication Code).5 PuTTY supports SSO through GSSAPI, including user provided GSSAPI DLLs. It also can emulate control sequences from xterm, VT220, VT102 or ECMA-48 terminal emulation, and allows local, remote, or dynamic port forwarding with SSH (including X11 forwarding). The network communication layer supports IPv6, and the SSH protocol supports the zlib@openssh.com delayed compression scheme. It can also be used with local serial port connections.
PuTTY comes bundled with command-line SCP and SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively, and plink, a command-line connection tool, used for non-interactive sessions.6
PuTTY does not support session tabs directly,7 but many wrappers are available that do.8
PuTTY development began in 1996,9 and was a usable SSH-2 client by October 2000.1011
PuTTY consists of several components:
"PuTTY FAQ". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-pronounce ↩
"PuTTY FAQ". [PuTTY is] the name of a popular SSH and Telnet client. Any other meaning is in the eye of the beholder. It's been rumoured that 'PuTTY' is the antonym of 'getty', or that it's the stuff that makes your Windows useful, or that it's a kind of plutonium Teletype. We couldn't possibly comment on such allegations. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-meaning ↩
"PuTTY for Symbian OS". s2putty.sourceforge.net. https://s2putty.sourceforge.net/ ↩
"Forum Nokia Wiki – PuTTY for Symbian OS". Archived from the original on 16 July 2012. https://archive.today/20120716084848/http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/PuTTY_for_symbian_OS ↩
"SSH and Transfer Files using Putty Private Key (.ppk)". D4Nyll. 21 June 2016. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210518105614/http://blog.danyll.com/ssh-and-transfer-files-using-putty-private-key-ppk/ ↩
Barrett, Daniel; Silverman, Richard; Byrnes, Robert (2005). SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly Media. pp. 577–579. ISBN 9780596008956. 9780596008956 ↩
"PuTTY wish multiple-connections". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/multiple-connections.html ↩
(e.g. SuperPuTTY, MTPuTTY, mRemoteNG, WinSSHTerm, PuTTY Manager, PuttyTabs or TWSC (Terminal Window ShortCuts)). https://github.com/jimradford/superputty ↩
Tatham, Simon (12 March 2025). "Iconography of the PuTTY tools". https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/putty-icons/ ↩
"PuTTY FAQ". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-ssh2 ↩
"PuTTY Change Log". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html ↩