Hop: A Modern Transport and Remote Access Protocol

Since SSH's standardization nearly 20 years ago, real-world requirements for a remote access protocol and our understanding of how to build secure cryptographic network protocols have both evolved significantly. In this work, we introduce Hop, a transport and remote access protocol designed to support today's needs. Building on modern cryptographic advances, Hop reduces SSH protocol complexity and overhead while simultaneously addressing many of SSH's shortcomings through a cryptographically-mediated delegation scheme, native host identification based on lessons from TLS and ACME, client authentication for modern enterprise environments, and support for client roaming and intermittent connectivity. We present concrete design requirements for a modern remote access protocol, describe our proposed protocol, and evaluate its performance. We hope that our work encourages discussion of what a modern remote access protocol should look like in the future.