Dropbear is a compact SSH server and client designed for environments where memory usage and executable size are important considerations. It is particularly suitable for embedded Linux systems, routers, small network appliances and other devices with limited resources.
The software provides essential SSH functionality while allowing administrators to select which capabilities are compiled into their installations. This flexibility makes it possible to produce comparatively small executables without requiring the complete collection of tools found in larger SSH distributions.
Despite its emphasis on efficiency, Dropbear is compatible with conventional SSH clients and provides facilities for interactive remote administration, secure authentication and encrypted network connections.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Designed for a small memory footprint, with build-time options for excluding functionality that is unnecessary on embedded devices.
- Includes the Dropbear server, dbclient SSH client, dropbearkey key generator and dropbearconvert utility for converting key formats.
- Supports public-key authentication using OpenSSH-compatible authorised_keys files, along with password authentication where enabled.
- Provides local and remote TCP port forwarding, X11 forwarding and SSH authentication-agent forwarding.
- Can operate as a standalone SSH daemon or be launched through inetd.
- Allows the server, client, key generator and conversion utility to be combined into a single multi-purpose executable.
- Supports multi-hop SSH connections through dbclient, allowing several intermediate hosts to be specified in a single command.
- Offers automatic host-key generation and configurable cryptographic algorithms, making it suitable for systems with differing security and resource requirements.
Website: github.com/mkj/dropbear
Support:
Developer: Matt Johnston
License: MIT License
Dropbear is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| SSH Servers | |
|---|---|
| OpenSSH | Comprehensive SSH server for secure remote access and file transfers |
| Teleport | Infrastructure access platform with SSH authentication and auditing |
| Warpgate | Transparent bastion host for secure, auditable remote access |
| ssh3 | Faster and rich secure shell using HTTP/3 |
| TinySSH | Minimalistic SSH server |
| Dropbear | Lightweight SSH server for embedded and resource-limited systems |
| ContainerSSH | Launches isolated, temporary containers for each SSH session |
| ssh2incus | SSH access to Incus instances without running SSH servers inside them |
| HPNSSH | High-performance SSH optimized for faster data transfers |
| wolfSSH | Embeddable SSH server implementation with SCP and SFTP support |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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