For some reason I have gotten the feeling that somehow the program, "putty" could be less secure than the other SSH program I use to remotely connect to my server, normally I use WinSCP. Is putty any less secure than WinSCP or vice versa? I am incredibly inexperienced in all things server/web/security related, thats why I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.
I needed to connect to my remote server using a terminal which could enter input requested by the server, something that WinSCP would not allow. This is because I needed to configure a .htpasswd file to restrict casual users from accessing my home directory, or any directory that I do not want them to access for that matter. My university which hosts this server suggests that I use WinSCP as I am a windows users, but WinSCP does not allow the specific command htpasswd -c .htpasswd path which creates the file at the location replaced by path and then requests my input to create the username/password, so I used putty instead.
Best Answer
Putty and WinSCP use the same underlying SSH2 protocol, the degree of security is mostly determined by this protocol.
The two programs aren't really comparable, WinSCP is a Secure Copy (SCP) client, Putty comes with an equivalent called pscp, but pscp is a command-line client not a GUI client. Putty is perhaps mainly used for remote shell access - entering commands (like the one you mention).
There's probably no reason why you can't use both Putty and WinSCP. You may even be able to share private keys between both applications.
I don't know of any current major security issue with Putty, or with WinSCP.