The Day SSH Got Port 22

From ylo Mon Jul 10 11:45:48 +0300 1995 From: Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi> To: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority <iana@isi.edu> Subject: request for port number Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Dear Sir, I have written a program to securely log from one machine into another over an insecure network. It provides major improvements in security and functionality over existing telnet and rlogin protocols and implementations. In particular, it prevents IP, DNS and outing spoofing. My plan is to distribute the software freely on the Internet and to get it into as wide use as possible. I would like to get a registered privileged port number for the software. The number should preferably be in the range 1-255 so that it can be used in the WKS field in name servers. I'll enclose the draft RFC for the protocol below. The software has been in local use for several months, and is ready for publication except for the port number. If the port number assignment can be arranged in time, I'd like to publish the software already this week. I am currently using port number 22 in the beta test. It would be great if this number could be used (it is currently shown as Unassigned in the lists). The service name for the software is "ssh" (for Secure Shell). Yours sincerely, Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi> ... followed by protocol specification for ssh-1.0 The next day, I had an e-mail from Joyce waiting in my mailbox: Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 15:35:33 -0700 From: jkreyn@ISI.EDU To: ylo@cs.hut.fi Subject: Re: request for port number Cc: iana@ISI.EDU Tatu, We have assigned port number 22 to ssh, with you as the point of contact. Joyce There we were! SSH port was 22!!!

A mock email exchange shows Tatu Ylonen asking the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for a privileged port number for his new Secure Shell software. The punchline is that the requested and assigned port was 22, which became the universally recognized SSH port; people share this as a humorous origin story for a familiar technical convention. EN: A mock email exchange shows Tatu Ylonen asking the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for a privileged port number for his new Secure Shell software. The punchline is that the requested and assigned port was 22, which became the universally recognized SSH port; people share this as a humorous origin story for a familiar technical convention.

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