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PuTTY
Free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application

PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator and network file transfer application supporting protocols such as SSH, SCP, Telnet, and raw socket connections, as well as serial port access. Originally developed for Microsoft Windows, PuTTY has been ported to various operating systems, including official support for Unix-like platforms and unofficial ports to Symbian and Windows Phone. It was developed and is maintained by British programmer Simon Tatham, with the name "PuTTY" having no official meaning.

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Features

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

History

PuTTY development began in 1996,9 and was a usable SSH-2 client by October 2000.1011

Components

PuTTY consists of several components:

PuTTY the Telnet, rlogin, and SSH client itself, which can also connect to a serial port PSCP an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy. Can also use SFTP to perform transfers PSFTP an SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP PuTTYtel a Telnet-only client Plink a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends. Usually used for SSH Tunneling Pageant an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink PuTTYgen an RSA, DSA, ECDSA and EdDSA key generation utility pterm (Unix version only) an X11 client which supports the same terminal emulation as PuTTY

See also

  • Free and open-source software portal
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References

  1. "PuTTY FAQ". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-pronounce ↩

  2. "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 ↩

  3. "PuTTY for Symbian OS". s2putty.sourceforge.net. https://s2putty.sourceforge.net/ ↩

  4. "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 ↩

  5. "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/ ↩

  6. Barrett, Daniel; Silverman, Richard; Byrnes, Robert (2005). SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly Media. pp. 577–579. ISBN 9780596008956. 9780596008956 ↩

  7. "PuTTY wish multiple-connections". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/multiple-connections.html ↩

  8. (e.g. SuperPuTTY, MTPuTTY, mRemoteNG, WinSSHTerm, PuTTY Manager, PuttyTabs or TWSC (Terminal Window ShortCuts)). https://github.com/jimradford/superputty ↩

  9. Tatham, Simon (12 March 2025). "Iconography of the PuTTY tools". https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/putty-icons/ ↩

  10. "PuTTY FAQ". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-ssh2 ↩

  11. "PuTTY Change Log". www.chiark.greenend.org.uk. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html ↩