The Secure Shell feature of Oracle Solaris provides secure access to a remote system over an unsecured network. In Secure Shell, authentication is provided by the use of passwords and public keys. All network traffic is encrypted. Secure Shell prevents an intruder from intercepting the communication.
Authentication establishes your identity. Authentication for ssh logins is provided by a combination of system passwords and public host keys. Authentication operations can be performed either by the remote system or by the network environment. The /etc/ssh_known_hosts file and the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file contain the list of known host keys on the system or account. By default, the ssh command verifies the remote host's key. If there is no host key for the remote host in either file, the user is asked whether they trust the new remote host's key. If the user confirms, the remote host's key is then added to the user's ~/.ssh/known_hosts file before the user is prompted for their password.
For more information about Secure Shell authentication, refer to Secure Shell Authentication in Managing Secure Shell Access in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .