No Apple hasn't finally given us what we want by releasing an official iPhone SDK so developers can create true apps for the phone, but that doesn't seem to be holding back enterprising hackers. Erica Sadun at our sister site The Unofficial Apple Weblog has released a basic text editor and even a screenshot app for the iPhone, while Gizmodo has MobileTerminal, a command line app that should allow for all kinds of iPhone hackery goodness.

Gizmodo also makes a great point: the code for MobileTerminal is being hosted at Google Code, which could mean a number of things, including:

• Apple hasn't fired up the cease & desist engine just yet
• They are quietly sanctioning this kind of hacking
• They're listening to demand and are working on opening the phone up
• They already have an iPhone SDK prepared and are waiting for something like Leopard in October because of specific code constraints

While we're likely to never hear word from tight-lipped Apple on an official iPhone SDK until it's actually made available to download, power users and iPhone enthusiasts are sure to take some solace in the fact that iPhone hackers seem to have opened it up quite a bit on their own already. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on what grassroots iPhone apps appear.

Got an iPhone and hoping to SSH into one of your servers to tweak or check something while on the go? This iPhone SSH client might be the trick. Designed to run in the iPhone's browser, this SSH tool looks full featured enough to be useful for the occasional sysadmin task.

This is a real killer app for the iPhone user who also happens to be a big geek, but we don't know how trustworthy it might be. We'd warn you against give your account credentials for one of your precious servers to just any website, but if you're the type of sysadmin+cryptogeek who'd fall in love with this app, you probably already know better.

PuTTY is tops on the short list of applications I install first on any Windows machine. Over the years I've used PuTTY, I've installed it on a huge number of computers but I've always had one complaint; There isn't a configuration file I can backup or move to a new machine.

Getting all the little comfort settings correct for each SSH connection can be a pain. The third time you set emulation, keys, encryption type, etc. for each machine you regularly access, you lose patience. The fifth time you find yourself re-entering settings you might do what I did, find a better way.

The OpenSSH team has officially realeased OpenSSH 4.4/4.4p. The latest updates to the popular ssh server and ssh/sftp client include some extremely advanced features for administrators, as well as the requisite OpenSSH security audits. As of 4.4, sshd_conf now supports a "Match" directive for conditional configuration to tailor the server to specific clients based on user, group, hostname, or ip, and also a "ForceCommand" option, which can be used in conjunction with the new Match directive, to execute a specific command, regardless of or in addition to what a client requests. this is a neat way for sysadmins to grab the attention of particular users without resorting to changing their shells or other hacks. They've added some new logging facilities and authentication options, too.

4.4p includes compilable options for hardware SSL acceleratoin, experimental SELinux support, experimental Solaris process contract support.

If you're wondering what all this 4.4p stuff is about, it's pretty simple. OpenSSH is a part of the OpenBSD project, and OpenSSH is developed, first and foremost, as an OpenBSD system utility. The base system takes full advantage of the OpenBSD environment, and relies on some facilities--such as OpenBSD malloc behavior--that may not be available on other systems. Since the team wants wide adoption of what they believe to be the best and most secure sshd out there, though, they also release a portable "p" version that will compile in a generic "unix" environment and is widely tested on systems ranging from an array of Linux flavors, to OS X, to HP-UX.

LinuxPlanet has a very thorough explanation of two ways to sync up files on a laptop/desktop pair within Linux. SSH comes to mind first, as OpenSSH should be available to any Linux user. But of course, there are some wrinkles. LinuxPlanet irons those out, and goes on to explain how to use rsync instead. This works better for more intricate transfers. A great how-to for those of you looking for this solution.

SftpDrive is a commercial app (free six-week trial, $39 to buy) that lets you map remote SSH/SFTP servers to network drives in Windows, meaning you can access your remote files just like local files from any Windows program securely. In addition to mapping network drives, SftpDrive will do SSH tunneling. I installed the trial (the download is less than 1.5MB) and found that the "zero configuration" claim on its web site is absolutely true. It took less than 30 seconds to get a network drive set up, most of which was spent trying to remember my username. Accessing remote files is fast—faster than my usual SSH client—and you can set up an unlimited number of drives. SftpDrive is slick and, as far as I can tell, performs as advertised in every respect.

[Via Joey Day]

Need to log into your PC and get your files remotely and securely? freeSSHd is a good place to start. It's a free SSH server for Windows that will get you set up with secure remote console access and file transfers quickly and painlessly. It's also pretty lightweight—the download is under 700kb—which we always like.

[Via Lifehacker]