OpenSSH 6.9 was released yesterday as the final step before the expected OpenSSH 7.0 release in late July.

With much work being invested into OpenSSH 7.0, OpenSSH 6.9 is mostly a bug-fix release. OpenSSH 6.9 has a few security fixes, new features for ssh/sshd/ssh-keygen/ssh-agent, [email protected] is now the default cipher, and many bug-fixes throughout this critical piece of open-source software.

With OpenSSH 7.0 due out later this month, the PermitRootLogin option will now default to no, support for the legacy SSH 1.x protocol will be disabled at compile time, and many other less-secure options are being disabled by default.

More details on OpenSSH 6.9 can be found via the release announcement.