OpenSSH for Windows Update

Steve Lee

Back in June, we announced our intentions to bring SSH to Windows by supporting and contributing to the OpenSSH community.  Our objective was to not only port OpenSSH so that it worked well on Windows, but to openly contribute those changes back into the portable version of OpenSSH.  Of the many options available, one clearly stood out: the previous work that NoMachine had already published in bringing OpenSSH to Windows.  The NoMachine port was based on OpenSSH 5.9, so we’ve spent the time since our initial announcement working with NoMachine to bring this port in sync with OpenSSH 7.1. 

With this initial milestone complete, we are now making the code publicly available and open for public contributions.  We will continue to partner with NoMachine on development in this public repository.  Please note that this code is still very early and should be treated as a developer preview and is not supported for use in production. 

Here’s how our rough roadmap looks:

  1. Update NoMachine port to OpenSSH 7.1 [Done]
  2. Leverage Windows crypto api’s instead of OpenSSL/LibreSSL and run as Windows Service
  3. Address POSIX compatibility concerns
  4. Stabilize the code and address reported issues
  5. Production quality release

At this point, the roadmap is specifically around providing a Windows port of OpenSSH with complete feature parity and interoperability.  Our goal is to get to milestone 5 within the first half of 2016. 

We welcome your contributions, as well as feedback on any issues you run into.

Steve Lee
Principal Software Engineer Manager
PowerShell Team

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