ssh3 is an experimental implementation of secure remote shell access that reimagines SSH communication using HTTP/3. Rather than relying on the conventional SSH transport protocol, it uses QUIC and TLS to establish protected connections and takes advantage of HTTP authentication mechanisms.
The project originated from academic research into reducing connection establishment latency and extending the capabilities of remote terminal protocols. Its design aims to establish sessions using fewer network round trips than conventional SSH, although this does not imply faster data transfers or lower latency during an established session.
ssh3 remains a research prototype rather than a production-ready replacement for OpenSSH. Its developers advise testing it in isolated environments and do not recommend exposing its server to the public Internet without further security review.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Establishes remote terminal connections over HTTP/3 using QUIC and TLS, rather than the conventional SSHv2 transport.
- Supports password and public-key authentication, with experimental OpenID Connect integration for identity provider-based login.
- Uses X.509 certificates for server authentication, including support for publicly trusted and self-signed certificates.
- Supports TCP port forwarding and UDP forwarding using QUIC datagrams, enabling access to services that communicate over UDP.
- Allows a server to respond only at a configured URL path, reducing its visibility to indiscriminate scanning without replacing authentication.
- Provides compatibility with OpenSSH authorised keys, selected SSH client configuration options and SSH agent authentication.
- Supports SSH agent forwarding and proxy-jump connections through intermediate ssh3 servers.
- Includes a standalone ssh3-server executable and a corresponding command-line client for testing the protocol.
Website: github.com/francoismichel/ssh3
Support:
Developer: François Michel
License: Apache License 2.0
ssh3 is written in Go. Learn Go 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 |
| ssh3 | Faster and rich secure shell using HTTP/3 |
| TinySSH | Minimalistic SSH server |
| Dropbear | Lightweight SSH server for embedded and resource-limited systems |
| quicssh-rs | Simple ssh server |
| ssh2incus | SSH access to Incus instances without running SSH servers inside them |
| Russh | Low-level Tokio SSH2 client and server implementation |
| wolfSSH | Embeddable SSH server implementation with SCP and SFTP support |
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