Dead simple SSH tunnel for my Windows users

Question

I'm running a Minecraft server, and many of my users are on a college campus whose network doesn't play nicely with Minecraft. I'm looking to package together a dead-simple way of creating a SSH tunnel to the server. Ideally, they would just double-click something to set it up. I'm prepared to do significantly more work on my end, if need be.

If there isn't anything simpler, I can just tell them to use PuTTY, but I'm afraid I might scare some of them away.

Answer 1

Bundle PuTTY's plink.exe and a batch script that sets up the tunnel:

@plink -v -N -D 1234 user@host

Replace -D 1234 with your desired tunnel options (-D, -L, -R; syntax same as in OpenSSH). (According to comments, you need -L 25565:localhost:25565.)

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To avoid users having to answer the SSH key verification prompt:

1. export PuTTY's cached key to a .reg file:

   reg export HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys hostkey.reg
   

2. open hostkey.reg in Notepad;

3. in the file, delete all other host keys except your Minecraft tunnel host;

4. add @reg import hostkey.reg as the first line of your batch script.