Open Source
Secure iXplorer - A GUI Front End for Open Source Code
Secure iXplorer consists of two parts:
- The full security functionality is contained in the open
source utilities from Putty (home page) "pscp", "psftp" and "plink".
- The other part, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is shareware. This user interface does not give any added functionality at all -only convenience. In fact, all Secure iXplorer does, is, that it converts your GUI interactions to typed commands, which are then sent to the putty commandline utlilities.
If you are more productive using the command line, then there is no need for you
to purchase Secure iXplorer. If however you are used to using a GUI and operate faster this way, then you will hopefully appreciate the convenience of our GUI, which helps you with the nice putty open source utilities.
Note: With other ssh clients you will probably have to choose between low motivation to maintain the product (due to that there is no income) or else having to trust the vendor with your security. With Secure iXplorer we instead combine the advantages of both development models.
Open Source and Security
Security expert and well known author Bruce Schneier writes in one of his newsletters (full text):
"As a cryptography and computer security expert, I have never understood the current fuss about the open source software movement. In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It's true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice.
Cryptography has been espousing open source ideals for decades, although we call it "using public algorithms and protocols." The idea is simple: cryptography is hard to do right, and the only way to know if something was done right is to be able to examine it.
This is vital in cryptography, because security has nothing to do with functionality. You can have two algorithms, one secure and the other insecure, and they both can work perfectly. They can encrypt and decrypt, they can be efficient and have a pretty user interface, they can never crash. The only way to tell good cryptography from bad cryptography is to have it examined..."
Bruce Schneier is the founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., inventor of the Blowfish, Twofish, and Yarrow algorithms and the author of "Applied Cryptography" and "Secrets and Lies".
More Information
David A. Wheeler has compiled a very nice information page.
OpenSSH is a widely used alternative to propietary SSH solutions. It has a very good track record. We highly recommend it at the server side -a great open source host side companion to Secure iXplorer. (See OpenSSH website)
