PuTTY: a free SSH and Telnet client

This is a mirror. Follow this link to find the primary PuTTY web site.

Home | FAQ | Feedback | Licence | Updates | Mirrors | Keys | Links | Team
Download: Stable · Snapshot | Docs | Changes | Wishlist

PuTTY is a free implementation of SSH and Telnet for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.

The latest version is 0.68. Download it here.

LEGAL WARNING: Use of PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink is illegal in countries where encryption is outlawed. We believe it is legal to use PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink in England and Wales and in many other countries, but we are not lawyers, and so if in doubt you should seek legal advice before downloading it. You may find useful information at cryptolaw.org, which collects information on cryptography laws in many countries, but we can't vouch for its correctness.

Use of the Telnet-only binary (PuTTYtel) is unrestricted by any cryptography laws.

Latest news

2017-02-21 PuTTY 0.68 released, containing ECC, a 64-bit build, and security fixes

PuTTY 0.68, released today, supports elliptic-curve cryptography for host keys, user authentication keys, and key exchange. Also, for the first time, it comes in a 64-bit Windows version.

0.68 also contains some security fixes: a vulnerability in agent forwarding is fixed, and Windows DLL hijacking should no longer be possible.

2017-01-21 Win64 builds and website redesign

We're now offering 64-bit Windows builds of PuTTY, alongside the 32-bit ones we've always provided.

Right now, the 64-bit builds work as far as we know, but they haven't had as much testing as the 32-bit ones. So we're still considering the 32-bit builds to be more likely to be stable. However, if you have any reason to want to use a 64-bit build (e.g. it needs to load a 64-bit supporting DLL for something like GSSAPI), or if you just feel like trying out the new builds, then please let us know if you have any trouble.

We've also redesigned our website. The old Download page isn't there any more: instead, we have separate pages for the latest release and the development snapshots. Also, you can find past release builds of PuTTY by following links from the Changes page, in case those are useful to you. (However, most of them have known vulnerabilities these days; we don't recommend you use any vulnerable past release if you can avoid it.)

2016-03-10 Switching to MSI-format Windows installer

We're switching to the MSI format for PuTTY's Windows installer (generated by the WiX toolset).

Mostly this is because of the report late last year that Windows installers created by Inno Setup are vulnerable to being hijacked by particular DLLs left in the same directory (such as your browser downloads directory).

However, MSI also provides some other useful features, including automated silent install/uninstall via msiexec /q, and also the ability to automatically put the PuTTY install directory on the PATH so that Command Prompts can run PSCP without any fuss.

The development snapshots will now have MSI installers, and we have also retrospectively generated an MSI installer for the recent 0.67 release. Sorry we didn't have it ready in time – MSI is quite complicated if you're not an expert, and it took a long time to get it to work!

For the moment, we're still providing Inno Setup installers as well, in case anyone has trouble with our new and not-very-tested MSIs. But we recommend that people use the MSI if possible, and if you must use the Inno Setup installer, make sure to put it in an empty directory before running it.

2016-03-05 PuTTY 0.67 released, fixing a SECURITY HOLE

PuTTY 0.67, released today, fixes a security hole in 0.66 and before: vuln-pscp-sink-sscanf. It also contains a few other small bug fixes.

Also, for the first time, the Windows executables in this release (including the installer) are signed using an Authenticode certificate, to help protect against tampering in transit from our website or after downloading. You should find that they list "Simon Tatham" as the verified publisher.

2015-11-07 PuTTY 0.66 released, fixing a SECURITY HOLE

PuTTY 0.66, released today, fixes a security hole in 0.65 and before: vuln-ech-overflow. It also contains a few other small bug fixes and minor features.

2015-09-02 GPG key rollover

This week we've generated a fresh set of GPG keys for signing PuTTY release and snapshot builds. We will begin signing snapshots with the new snapshot key, and future releases with the new release key. The new master key is signed with the old master keys, of course. See the keys page for more information.

2015-07-25 PuTTY 0.65 released, containing bug fixes

PuTTY 0.65, released today, fixes the Vista bug where the configuration dialog became invisible, and a few other bugs, large and small.

2015-06-21 Pre-releases of 0.65 now available

We're working towards a 0.65 release. This will be a bug-fix release: it will not contain the various new cryptographic features in the development snapshots, but it will contain large and small bug fixes over 0.64, including in particular a fix for the recent Vista-specific bug in which the configuration dialog becomes invisible. We'd appreciate testing of the pre-release builds, which are available from the Download page as usual.

2015-05-19 Malware pretending to be PuTTY

A Symantec blog post warns that a trojaned copy of PuTTY has been detected in the wild. Fortunately, it's easily recognisable by its version identification ("Unidentified build, Nov 29 2013 21:41:02"). If you've encountered this version, we suggest you treat any machine that's run the malicious version as potentially compromised, change any passwords that might have been stolen, and resecure the accounts they protect.

2015-04-19 PuTTY detected as malware

We've had several reports recently of anti-virus software reporting PuTTY as malware (under a wide variety of names, often generic). This affects the latest release (0.64) and also the development snapshots (particularly puttygen.exe).

We believe these are false positives. In those cases where we've been able to contact the vendor (McAfee, Symantec, ClamAV), they have removed the detection.

However, most vendors' false-positive response is to whitelist specific binaries. While this will resolve detections of the 0.64 release, expect detections to recur with the development snapshots, which are built daily.

We've had no success requesting AV software vendors to perform more in-depth analysis. If this is causing trouble for you, and you have a support contract with your AV vendor, please query the detection with them directly.

Site map


If you want to comment on this web site, see the Feedback page.
(last modified on Tue Feb 21 18:55:01 2017)