PuTTY

PuTTY is a terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols. The word "PuTTY" has no meaning,^[1] though 'tty' is sometimes used to refer to the Unix terminals, as an acronym for 'teletype'.

PuTTY

PuTTY main configuration dialog on Windows
Developer(s)	Simon Tatham
Stable release	0.78 / October 28, 2022 (2022-10-28)
Repository	git.tartarus.org?p=simon%2Fputty.git
Written in	C
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Terminal emulator
License	MIT License
Website	PuTTY website

PuTTY was first written for Microsoft Windows, but it has been ported to other operating systems including some Unix-like platforms. Mac OS and Mac OS X are still being ported, while unofficial ports have been ported it to the Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems.

PuTTY is currently beta software. Licensed under the MIT License, and it is free and open source software.

Features

Some features of PuTTY are:

• Unicode support.
• Control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version.
• Command-line SCP and SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively.
• Control over port forwarding with SSH (local, remote or dynamic port forwarding), including built-in handling of X11 forwarding.
• Emulates most xterm, VT102 control sequences, as well as much of ECMA-48 terminal emulator.
• IP Version 6 support.
• Supports 3DES, AES, Arcfour, Blowfish, DES.
• Public-key authentication support.
• Support for local serial port connections.

Main Programs

PuTTY running a session on Windows Vista.

The versions available are made up of some or all of the following programs:

• PuTTY - the Telnet and SSH client itself;
• PSCP - an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy;
• 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;
• Pageant - an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink;
• PuTTYgen - an RSA and DSA key generation utility;
• pterm - a standalone terminal emulator.

Related pages

• W-PuTTY-CD
• FreeOTFE - Disk encryption
• Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) - Email encryption