this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2026
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Why aren't there more minimal implementations like tinyssh?
There's Dropbear SSH, which is the most common choice for a minimal SSH server and client, but even that is around 50,000 lines of code.
Because all those extra features are really useful. You can run all sorts of things over ssh, from sophisticated file transfer to remote development and tunneling
Ssh is remote code execution. Under any implementation, any authentication methods should be the absolute last line of defense after you've properly locked down access
Well, yeah but more features in remote code excution = more vulnerabilities. For example sftp: you could also just run ftp over vpn for the same effect. Or just cat the file over ssh. Instead, we have one big monolith.
SFTP is just FTP over SSH... Also, FTP is essentially one small step away from code execution, even on a secure network it's better to use SFTP
SSH isn't many things, it's one connection type through which you can do many things. You can't simply cat a file over without being able to handle the throughput gracefully, otherwise you'd have to design a new layer to do exactly the same thing. The same for reading files, if it can't gracefully spit out 10k lines in a second you couldn't handle output
And if you can do all that, why not allow VIM over the same connection? You're already going to have to manage the terminal session, why not fully reflect a terminal?
FTP is absolutely not the answer, but a server that will conditionally serve files as well as conditionally accept uploads is far more secure. The same for everything... If you want to manage users, instead of allowing remote code execution you should use an API to perform predefined tasks
SSH isn't meant for security or production use, it's meant for power and flexibility. It's generally deactivated by default for a reason, but it's included for a reason too. It's just really damn useful