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SSH (Secure Shell) keys serve as an access credential that is used in SSH protocol. They give added security to SSH in the sense that a password need not be used when making use of SSH keys. SSH Keys
SSH key pair comprises both a public key and a private key, both of which are a long string of characters.
The public key is saved in the server to which SSH connection is to be done and the private key is stored on the system from which SSH connection is requested. You may also add Free Putty Download Extension to your chrome.
To create SSH keys and further use them on Windows, the below utility tools are required.
PuTTY - used to connect remotely to servers through SSH PuTTYgen – used to create SSH keys Downloading and Installing PuTTY and PuTTYgen Download Putty
PuTTY can be installed using the MSI package file available from the Putty Official Website.
Access the below link and download the MSI (‘Windows Installer’) 64-bit package to the Windows server. Double click on the downloaded MSI file to start the PuTTY installation wizard. Click on Next.
Click on Next after confirming the destination folder in which the application will be installed. In the context of this guide, PuTTY is being installed in the folder C:\Program Files\PuTTY.
Click on Install to start the installation process
A prompt that reads “Please generate some randomness by moving the mouse over the blank area.” will be shown whereby the mouse pointer can be randomly moved over the area below the message until the green bar fills up.
This randomness is termed entropy helps in creating irreproducible keys in a secure manner.
Once the key generation is completed, the public key will be displayed in the text box. This key can be copied/saved safely as this is the key that is to be copied to the Cloud servers for later use.
A passphrase for the SSH key can also be created, which helps in improving the security of the public/private key pair. This passphrase would need to be provided each time the SSH key is used.
Once the passphrase has been set up, click on the Save private key button in order to save the private key in a secure location, with any name of choice. The private key will be saved with the .ppk extension
The public key can also be saved, however, the format in which the public key is saved by PuTTYgen is incompatible with the OpenSSH authorized_keys files used on Linuxservers.
To view the public key in the compatible format again, the already saved private key can be loaded using the Load option in PuTTYgen.
This generated public key-private key pair can now be used to access the Linux OpenSSH server from the Windows machine using SSH key authentication.