Question Is SSH access, via PuTTy, an encrypted connection?

[Craig1986]

I recently needed to connect to my Plesk server, via SSH, using my Root credentials. My choice of software being PuTTy.

To achieve this, I had to perform the following commands, due to having previously disabled Root access via SSH:

login as: [Another user on the Plesk server]
password:  [user's password - hidden]

$ su - root
password - [root password - hidden]

The issue I then had was that I entered an incorrect root password. This then took me to the next line, where I entered the password again but it appeared on the screen in plain text as follows:

su: Authentication failure
$ [root password displayed]
-sh: 2: [partial display of root password]: not found

With the above in mind, I am wondering if the above Root password would had been sent over the network as plain text and thus become visible to attackers or would the password not be visible, due to the data transfer being encrypted, as I was already logged in as another user?

 

[AYamshanov]

Hi Craig1986,

When you input the password after "Authentication failure", it was interpreted as a command; the command with a name like a password does not exist. The password (as all other text in SSH connection) encrypted before sending over the network.

But possibly the wrong password could be saved in the interpreter ("bash"? it depends on an interpreter) history file, e.g.: ".bash_history". Maybe this link could help you to check this: How to view the `.bash_history` file via command line?