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.

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.

Benefit of SSH Tunneling

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.

As long as the Hosting Company provides SSH access, you can still connect through Navicat's Port Forwarding function.

Navicat Port Forwarding

When your Navicat communicates with your remote MySQL server, all communication (with the exception of the user password) is done in plain text. Navicat Port Forwarding offers an easy way to boost the security of communications with the MySQL server. It protects MySQL sessions from various attacks.

The next session will illustrate how to setup SSH Tunnel by Navicat.

Navicat 2005 (version 6.0), has started to support this feature. If your remote server supports SSH connection, your Navicat will be able to connect with remote MySQL databases through SSH tunnel without making any changes to existing MySQL privileges setting.

Setting up Navicat for SSH Tunnel

Version Information
Navicat (Mac OS X) version : 6.0 or higher