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Concept
Secure copy protocol
Summary
Secure copy protocol (SCP) is a means of securely transferring s between a local host and a remote host or between two remote hosts. It is based on the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. "SCP" commonly refers to both the Secure Copy Protocol and the program itself.
According to OpenSSH developers in April 2019, SCP is outdated, inflexible and not readily fixed; they recommend the use of more modern protocols like and rsync for file transfer. As of OpenSSH version 9.0, scp client therefore uses SFTP for file transfers by default instead of the legacy SCP/RCP protocol.
The SCP is a network protocol, based on the BSD RCP protocol, which supports s between hosts on a network. SCP uses Secure Shell (SSH) for data transfer and uses the same mechanisms for authentication, thereby ensuring the authenticity and confidentiality of the data in transit. A client can send (upload) files to a server, optionally including their basic attributes (permissions, timestamps). Clients can also request files or directories from a server (download). SCP runs over TCP port 22 by default. Like RCP, there is no RFC that defines the specifics of the protocol.
Normally, a client initiates an SSH connection to the remote host, and requests an SCP process to be started on the remote server. The remote SCP process can operate in one of two modes:
source mode, which reads files (usually from disk) and sends them back to the client, or
sink mode, which accepts the files sent by the client and writes them (usually to disk) on the remote host.
For most SCP clients, source mode is generally triggered with the -f flag (from), while sink mode is triggered with -t (to). These flags are used internally and are not documented outside the SCP source code.
In the past, in remote-to-remote secure copy, the SCP client opens an SSH connection to the source host and requests that it, in turn, open an SCP connection to the destination. (Remote-to-remote mode did not support opening two SCP connections and using the originating client as an intermediary).
Official source
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