by kenlin

What Is SSH?
SSH stands for Secure SHell and is typically used as an encrypted version of telnet.

In a telnet session, all communications are transmitted in plain-text, allowing anyone to listen-in on your session and steal passwords and other information. Such sessions are also susceptible to session hijacking, where a malicious user takes over your session once you have authenticated.

OpenSSH, the tool included with most Linux variants, is a FREE version of the SSH suite of network connectivity tools that increasing numbers of people on the Internet are coming to rely on. Many users of telnet, rlogin, ftp, and other such programs might not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other network-level attacks.

SSH allows you to access a remote server's shell without compromising security. SSH serves to prevent such vulnerabilities.

What is SSH Tunneling?
SSH can be used to encrypt communications between Navicat and your remote MySQL server. This is known as SSH tunneling and is actually quite simple to use.

Many Hosting Companies that provide MySQL hosting will block access to the MySQL server from outside the hosting company's network, and only grant access to users connecting from localhost.

The major benefit of SSH tunneling is that it allows us to connect to a MySQL server from behind a firewall when the MySQL server port is blocked.