BAMSE, SSH library and client for VMS

BAMSE is a project to build a better SSH client for VMS than FISH ever could be. As much as I liked FISH, it lacked the modularity required to add major features that were missing, like port forwarding channels and X forwarding, as well as implementing SSH version 2.

The goals with BAMSE are the following:

• To support everything that FISH supported, of course!
• To support both SSH version 1 (as described in draft-ylonen-ssh-protocol-00.txt) and version 2 (as described in draft-ietf-secsh-connect-14.txt, draft-ietf-secsh-transport-11.txt, draft-ietf-secsh-userauth-13.txt and draft-ietf-secsh-architecture-11.txt)
• To support port forwarding
• To support X forwarding
• To have the SSH functionality built as a library that has a socket-like API, so it can be used from other programs, like sftp (as described in draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02.txt).

[The following drafts may also be interesting:

• draft-ietf-secsh-auth-kbdinteract-02.txt
• draft-ietf-secsh-dh-group-exchange-02.txt
• draft-ietf-secsh-publickeyfile-02.txt

For cryptography, BAMSE will use a modular library of routines that I'm currently writing, and that I hope become partof OpenSSL version 1.

Announcements go to the following mailing lists and newsgroups:

• VMS-SSH@alpha.sggw.waw.pl
• comp.os.vms (INFO-VAX@mvb.saic.com)

Previews of BAMSE will be placed in http://dist.lp.se/historical/VMS/PREVIEWS/. Please look there, and try it out and report whatever faults you've found.

Features added:

• The crypto library is taking on good shape. A few symmetric algorithms and modes have been included: AES, DES, Blowfish, ECB, CBC, OFB, CFB.
• There is a design document. It will develop further.
• I just started on the SSH library (haven't commited much yet)

My CVS repository for BAMSE is http://cvs.lp.se/viewcvs/bamse/. Take a look if you really want to see exactly what I've commited in the last few hours or days.