1.2. What SSH Is Not

Although SSH stands for Secure Shell, it is not a true shell in the sense of the Unix Bourne shell and C shell. It is not a command interpreter, nor does it provide wildcard expansion, command history, and so forth. Rather, SSH creates a channel for running a shell on a remote computer, in the manner of the Unix rsh command, but with end-to-end encryption between the local and remote computer.

SSH is also not a complete security solution -- but then, nothing is. It won't protect computers from active break-in attempts or denial-of-service attacks, and it won't eliminate other hazards such as viruses, Trojan horses, and coffee spills. It does, however, provide robust and user-friendly encryption and authentication.

---