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SSH Key Pair

This section illustrates how to generate a SSH key pair that can be used to authenticate against the target device.

Supported Key Types

SSH.NET supports the following private key formats:

  • RSA in OpenSSL PEM and ssh.com format
  • DSA in OpenSSL PEM and ssh.com format
  • ECDSA 256/384/521 in OpenSSL PEM and OpenSSH key format
  • ED25519 in OpenSSH key format

Generate key Pair on Windows 10 or newer

Use the following steps to generate an SSH key pair supported by this extension. Open a Command Prompt (cmd.exe) and execute one of the following commands:

RSA Key (4096 bit)

ssh-keygen -b 4096 -t rsa -f id_rsa -q -N "" -m pem

This will create a 4096 bit RSA keypair with no passphrase stored in the file id_rsa

ECDSA Key (256 bit curve)

ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -b 256 -f id_ecdsa -q -N "" -m pem

This will create a 256 bit ECDSA keypair with no passphrase stored in the file id_ecdsa

By default, the generated SSH keys get stored in %USERPROFILE%\.ssh

  • id_rsa/id_ecdsa holds the key pair (public and private)
  • id_rsa.pub/id_ecdsa.pub holds the public key

Add SSH key to authorized_keys

Use the following steps if you want to manually add the generated keys to the 'authorized_keys' file on the target system. Open a Window Commmand Prompt and execute the following command:

type %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa.pub | ssh USER@HOST "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Add the SSH server fingerprints to known_hosts

Use the following command template to add the SSH server fingerprints to the 'known_hosts' file on the local development PC. Open a Window Commmand Prompt and execute the following command:

ssh-keyscan HOST >> %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\known_hosts

References

This extension relies on SSH.NET at version 2025.0.0