In June 2015, Microsoft announced its intentions to bring SSH to Windows by supporting and contributing to the OpenSSH community. The company not only intended to port OpenSSH so that it would work on Windows, but to openly contribute those changes back into the portable version of OpenSSH.
Steve Lee, Principal Software Engineer Manager in Microsoft’s PowerShell Team, writes that of the many options available, one clearly stood out: the previous work that NoMachine had already published in bringing OpenSSH to Windows. “The NoMachine port was based on OpenSSH 5.9, so we’ve spent the time since our initial announcement working with NoMachine to bring this port in sync with OpenSSH 7.1”, says Lee.
With this initial milestone complete, the company is now making the code publicly available and open for public contributions. “We will continue to partner with NoMachine on development in this public repository. Please note that this code is still very early and should be treated as a developer preview and is not supported for use in production”, says Lee, while presenting the following roadmap:
– Update NoMachine port to OpenSSH 7.1 [Done]
– Leverage Windows crypto api’s instead of OpenSSL/LibreSSL and run as Windows Service
– Address POSIX compatibility concerns
– Stabilize the code and address reported issues
– Production quality release
Microsoft’s plan is based tool in Windows encryption interfaces instead of OpenSSL or LibreSSL, and the whole process will be executed as a Windows Service. The company attempts to is to lauch the solution in the first half of 2016.
