And example of the content of $cmd is

$cmd = "/info/dump"
[download]

which when executed on the command line of the Alteon gives a screen dump of the current configuration. The message about SCP command message appears whenever I use the $ssh->cmd function (regardless of what command is written).
An interesting thing about this is that if you try and scp command from a shell to the Alteon, the same message is recieved.