Using Keepas and PuTTY you can make your login secure using a command line tool for communicating with an SSH server. If you are a webmaster, you should be using SSH for uploading and downloading files because they are more secure than using FTP method. SSH encrypts communication between your computer and the SSH server in your hosting company. So if Mr. Bad Guy is monitoring your communications, he will be greatly disappointed.
This article details how to use copy-paste feature in all Mac devices. While using Apple devices like Mac, you can copy-paste content within the device or across Apple devices. For example, you can copy content from Mac to iPhone or iPad (vice versa) by using the Universal Clipboard option (details given below).
It is why Control- C for copy or Control-V for paste will not work in Putty because of this. TO summarize: To copy: select any string inside Putty with your mouse (don’t press right click yet!, simply select or highlight the string with your mouse) To paste: right click on the location you want to paste the string. In addition to the above keyboard shortcuts, on a Mac you can use the Copy and Paste options in the Edit menu, which can always be found in an application's menu bar at the top of the screen.
PuTTY though is much more challenging than FTP particularly that this does not allow storing passwords for security reasons. This means that every time you log on to PuTTY you are required to enter your username and password.
There are solutions for password-less Putty communication to a server such as discussed in this tutorial: http://www.dailyiteration.com/howto-passwordless-ssh-authentication-with-putty/, but it requires knowledge of encryption keys and authentication which is too much for a beginner or novice webmasters.
This short guide will focus on the most efficient method of entering usernames and passwords in the PuTTY terminal- the copy and paste method.
How To Copy And Paste On Facebook
Copy and paste alone is not even secure by design. Your username and password will stay in the clipboard for a very long time unless it is intentionally cleared (through pressing Esc key or other methods). It is even more insecure if you are typing your username and passwords. Assuming the high risk level of key loggers in your computer that are undetected; they can sniff your login information easily if you type it. Therefore the safest way to copy and paste login details from Keepas: http://keepass.info/
Recommendation: It is highly recommended that you do not rely on encryption alone to protect your passwords. You still need a high level security in your computer by installing reputable third party antivirus either Kaspersky, Bitdefender or Nod Eset 32 to detect and prevent these malware from abusing your Windows computer and compromising your login.
Keepas stores password with high encryption and expires password in 10 seconds by default (you can customize this, the lesser the better) after copying it. This makes it highly secure if you are using copy and paste because it is cleared in a very short time from the clipboard.
The less familiar part is how to paste the username and password in the PuTTY terminal. These are the actual steps (for efficiency, open BOTH the Keepas and PuTTY terminal window before doing the steps below):
Step1. Initiate the SSH server connection using PuTTY; this is done by clicking “Open”. Step2. PuTTY will ask for a username. Step3. Now right click on the login entry of your Keepas for that specific website then click “Copy Username”. Step4. Now in the PuTTY; RIGHT CLICK your mouse accurately on the light green colored cursor at the “login as:” field. This will automatically paste your username.
Screenshot:
Step5. Press enter key, PuTTY will ask for your password. Step6. Right click on the Keepas entry of your website and then click “Copy Password”. Step7. RIGHT CLICK again ACCURATELY on the light green color on the password field. RIGHT CLICKING automatically pastes your password. You won’t see it for security reasons. Step8. Now press enter key. If your login details are correct, you should be able to connect to your hosting SSH server.
The secret word to become efficient when doing copy paste of login details to PuTTY is doing “RIGHT CLICK”.
TIPS: If you are using Ubuntu; Linux terminal (Accessories – Terminal) can used to connect to the SSH server with the same functionality as PuTTY: Command is: ssh [email protected] Of course it assumes your hosting SSH server is using port 22. But in case it is using different SSH port:
Command is: ssh –p 1234 [email protected] In the example above, SSH port is 1234.
It allows you to paste the username and password from Keepas (works with Ubuntu Wine) by going to “Edit –Paste”. Personally, this is what I’m using when I’m in Linux. I only use PuTTY on Windows.
Often in a PuTTY session you will find text on your terminal screen which you want to type in again. Like most other terminal emulators, PuTTY allows you to copy and paste the text rather than having to type it again. Also, copy and paste uses the Windows clipboard, so that you can paste (for example) URLs into a web browser, or paste from a word processor or spreadsheet into your terminal session.
PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the mouse. In order to copy text to the clipboard, you just click the left mouse button in the terminal window, and drag to select text. When you let go of the button, the text is automatically copied to the clipboard. You do not need to press Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Ins; in fact, if you do press Ctrl-C, PuTTY will send a Ctrl-C character down your session to the server where it will probably cause a process to be interrupted.
Pasting is done using the right button (or the middle mouse button, if you have a three-button mouse and have set it up; see section 4.11.2). (Pressing Shift-Ins, or selecting ‘Paste’ from the Ctrl+right-click context menu, have the same effect.) When you click the right mouse button, PuTTY will read whatever is in the Windows clipboard and paste it into your session, exactly as if it had been typed at the keyboard. (Therefore, be careful of pasting formatted text into an editor that does automatic indenting; you may find that the spaces pasted from the clipboard plus the spaces added by the editor add up to too many spaces and ruin the formatting. There is nothing PuTTY can do about this.)
If you double-click the left mouse button, PuTTY will select a whole word. If you double-click, hold down the second click, and drag the mouse, PuTTY will select a sequence of whole words. (You can adjust precisely what PuTTY considers to be part of a word; see section 4.11.5.) If you triple-click, or triple-click and drag, then PuTTY will select a whole line or sequence of lines.
Paste Into Putty
If you want to select a rectangular region instead of selecting to the end of each line, you can do this by holding down Alt when you make your selection. You can also configure rectangular selection to be the default, and then holding down Alt gives the normal behaviour instead: see section 4.11.4 for details.
(In some Unix environments, Alt+drag is intercepted by the window manager. Shift+Alt+drag should work for rectangular selection as well, so you could try that instead.)
If you have a middle mouse button, then you can use it to adjust an existing selection if you selected something slightly wrong. (If you have configured the middle mouse button to paste, then the right mouse button does this instead.) Click the button on the screen, and you can pick up the nearest end of the selection and drag it to somewhere else.
It's possible for the server to ask to handle mouse clicks in the PuTTY window itself. If this happens, the mouse pointer will turn into an arrow, and using the mouse to copy and paste will only work if you hold down Shift. See section 4.6.2 and section 4.11.3 for details of this feature and how to configure it.