ssh-keygen is a standard component of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol suite found on Unix, Unix-like and Microsoft Windows computer systems used to establish secure shell sessions between remote computers over insecure networks, through the use of various cryptographic techniques. The ssh-keygen utility is used to generate, manage, and convert authentication keys.

Overview

ssh-keygen is able to generate a key using one of three different digital signature algorithms. With the help of the ssh-keygen tool, a user can create passphrase keys for any of these key types. To provide for unattended operation, the passphrase can be left empty, albeit at increased risk. These keys differ from keys used by the related tool GNU Privacy Guard. OpenSSH-based client and server programs have been included in Windows 10 since version 1803. The SSH client and key agent are enabled and available by default and the SSH server is an optional Feature-on-Demand.

Key formats supported

Example: RTFM Originally, with SSH protocol version 1 (now deprecated) only the RSA algorithm was supported. As of 2016, RSA is still considered strong, but the recommended key length has increased over time. The SSH protocol version 2 additionally introduced support for the DSA algorithm. DSA is now considered weak and was disabled in OpenSSH 7.0. Subsequently, OpenSSH added support for a third digital signature algorithm, ECDSA (this key format no longer uses the previous PEM file format for private keys, nor does it depend upon the OpenSSL library to provide the cryptographic implementation). A fourth format is supported using Ed25519, originally developed by independent cryptography researcher Daniel J. Bernstein.

Command syntax

The syntax of the ssh-keygen command is as follows: ssh-keygen [options] Some important options of the ssh-keygen command are as follows:

Files used by the ssh-keygen utility

The ssh-keygen utility generates files for storing public and private keys. Note : they are stored in $HOME/.ssh/ as follows:

SSH protocol version 2

SSH protocol version 1