Jul 19, 2013 PuTTYgen is what you will use to generate your SSH keys for use in PuTTY. To start, all you need to do is download the exectuable files (.exe) and save them on the computer that you'll use to connect to your VPS, e.g. On the desktop. The simplest way to generate a key pair is to run ssh-keygen without arguments. In this case, it will prompt for the file in which to store keys. Here's an example: klar (11:39) ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair. Key generation with PuTTY. To generate a key pair with the PuTTY key generator, simply run puttygen.exe and click the Generate button in the window that appears. You will be asked to move the mouse and press keys to improve the random number generation at the heart of SSH security. To create and use SSH keys on Windows, you need to download and install both PuTTY, the utility used to connect to remote servers through SSH, and PuTTYgen, a utility used to create SSH keys. On the PuTTY website, download the.msi file in the Package files section at the top of the page, under MSI (‘Windows Installer’). Next, install it on your local computer by double clicking it and using the.
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SSH keys are one of the most secure SSH authentication options. It is definitely more secure than the usual SSH password authentication. Therefore, it is highly recommended to use SSH Key authentication method for connections to your servers.
With password authentication, you can connect to your server from any location, you only need to fill in your password. However, if your password gets leaked, it is a major risk as anyone who knows your password will be able to get into the server.
SSH Key authentication only allows connections from clients whose key matches the one on the server. Basically, you generate a key pair (private key and public key). The private key is placed on your local machine and the public key is uploaded to the server. When connecting to the server, a validation of these two keys is made and if the key pair passes the validation you are allowed to connect. Of course, you can upload keys of multiple users so that you or other authorized users would be able to connect to the server from different computers.
As you can see this is a much safer connection method. In this tutorial, we will focus on Windows users who use PuTTY for connections to the server and show how to generate PuTTYSSH Keys. If you want to generate SSH Keys on Linux or Mac, see this tutorial.
What you’ll need
Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:
- Access to your Linux server / VPS
- PuTTY and PuTTYgen installed on your computer (Download here)
Step 1 — Downloading PuTTYgen
Most of you have PuTTY installed on your computers already, however, to generate SSH Keys you also will need PuTTYgen.
- Download PuTTYgenhere
- You should be able to see this file downloaded:
No installation is required for PuTTYgen, it will run when you execute the file.
Step 2 — Generating your SSH Key pair
- Open up PuTTYgen by double clicking on the puttygen.exe file you have downloaded in Step 1.
- You should be able to see a window like this:
- Before generating your SSH Key pair, you can edit some settings, for example, key length, however, in most cases the default options will work just fine.
- Generate your SSH Key pair by clicking the Generate button.
- When the progress bar starts loading, move your mouse randomly across the area to load up the bar and generate your key pair.
- Your public SSH key will be displayed on the screen:
- For additional security it is highly recommended to think of a passphrase for your SSH key (However, you can also leave it empty):
- Save your private key to any desired location on your computer and name it anything you like.
- Save your public key to the same location on your computer and name it anything you like.
And that is it, you have generated your SSH Key pair. The private key will stay on your computer (do not provide it to anyone) while your public key needs to be uploaded to the server you wish to connect to.
Step 3 — Setting up your private key on PuTTY
In order for the server to recognize your computer when connecting from PuTTY, you need to attach the private key to PuTTY.
- Open up PuTTY.
- Navigate to Connection -> SSH -> Auth in the left sidebar.
- Browse for your private key file in the field Private key for authentication
- Select the private key file with .ppk ending and click Open.
Step 4 – Adding public key to server
Lastly, you need to upload your public key to the server:
- On your local computer, open public key file (id_rsa.pub) you generated in Step 2 with any text editor and copy its contents (public key).
- Connect to your VPS using Putty. See this guide for detailed steps.
- If .ssh folder does not exist, create it together with authorized_keys file with the following command:
mkdir ~/.ssh | touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
- Secure SSH Key file by changing permissions:
chmod 0700 ~/.ssh; chmod 0644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
- Open authorized_keys file with vim text editor:
vim ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
- Press i key on your keyboard and right mouse button to paste the public key.
- Press Esc button and type in
:x
, hit Enter button. This command will save changes made to the file.
That is it, you can now use SSH keys instead of SSH password authentication to connect to your VPS.
Conclusion
You have learned how to generate PuTTY SSH Keys using PuTTYgen. This will make your connection to the server a lot more secure and convenient as you will not need to fill in the password each time. We recommend using this way of SSH authentication at all times and disable password authentication for good to completely secure your server. To find out how to completely disable SSH Password authentication on your server and use SSH Key authentication instead, follow this tutorial: How to disable SSH Password authentication on VPS.
Generate RSA keys with SSH by using PuTTYgen
One effective way of securing SSH access to your cloud server is to usea public-private key pair. This means that a public key is placed onthe server and a private key is placed on your local workstation.Using a key pair makes it impossible for someone to log in by using justa password, as long as you set up SSH to deny password-basedauthentication.
Generate Ssh Key Putty
This article provides steps for generating RSA keys by using PuTTYgen onWindows for secure SSH authentication with OpenSSH.
Generate keys
In Windows, use PuTTYgen to generate your public and private keys.
- If needed, download PuTTYgen from the PuTTY download page.(PuTTYgen might have been installed previously with PuTTY or WinSCP.)
- Launch the program, and then click the Generate button.The program generates the keys for you.
- Enter a unique key passphrase in the Key passphrase andConfirm passphrase fields.For additional information about using passphrases,see Log in with a SSH Private Key on Windows.
- Save the public and private keys by clicking the Save public keyand Save private key buttons.
- From the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys filefield at the top of the window, copy all the text (starting with ssh-rsa)to your clipboard by pressing Ctrl-C.You need this key available on your clipboard to paste eitherinto the public key tool in the Control Panel or directly into theauthorized keys on your cloud server.
Use the key pair
You can use the RSA key pair in the following ways.
Specify your SSH key when creating a new cloud server
When you create a cloud server, you can assign a public key from the list of keys.If your key is not already in the list, you may add it, and then assign it.
Add a new public key to the list
- Under Advanced Options on the Create Server page, click Manage SSHKeys.
- Select public key for the cloud server from the SSH Keys listand click Add Public Key.
- Enter the key name, select the region, and paste the entire publickey into the Public Key field. Then click Add Public Key.
- Go back to the Create Server page, and confirm that your key is listedin the SSH Key list.
Assign a public key
- Under Advanced Options on the Create Server page, select the publickey you want to use from the SSH key drop-down menu.
- When you are done specifying the all the other details for the server,click Create Server.
Assign your SSH Key to an existing cloud server
Putty Key Pair
To make use of your newly generated RSA key pair, you must tell PuTTY touse it when connecting to your cloud server.
- To edit the file (or create it), run the following command on the cloud server:
- Paste the text onto its own line in the file.You must have the key available in your clipboard to paste it. The key and itsassociated text (the ssh-rsa identified at the start and the comment at the end)must be on one line in the file. If the text is word-wrapped onto multiple linesan error might occur when connecting.
- If you created the authorized_keys file, change its permissionsafter you’re done editing it by running the following command:
- Open PuTTY, and go to the SSH > Auth section.
- Browse to the location of the key file, and load the private key.
- Go to the Session page, and save the session. This saves the configurationso that PuTTY uses the key every time that you connect to your cloudserver.
After you save your session, your key is loaded automatically when youconnect to your server.
Ssh Public Key Windows
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