Generate Ssh Rsa Key Windows

How to Generate an SSH key in Windows 10

To generate the public/private key pair, enter this in the Command Prompt: ssh-keygen At the first prompt, “Enter file in which to save the key,” press Enter to save it in the default location.
Click the Copy to Clipboard button to copy your public SSH key. From Bitbucket, click Add key. Enter a Label for your new key, for example, Default public key. Paste the copied public key into the SSH Key field. Bitbucket sends you an email to confirm the addition of the key.
Those connecting from a Windows host should skip to the Instructions (Windows) section. Issue the following command at a shell prompt (by default, Mac OS Terminal uses a bash shell): ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048. This will create a RSA public/private key pair in the.ssh directory below your account’s home directory.
Windows will now generate your RSA public/private key pair. The public key will be stored as “idrsa.pub” in the directory you specified. Upload this key to any machines you need to SSH into.
Instructions (Windows) Windows does not ship with software for generating SSH keys. Although many third party software packages can be used, this Lab Step uses PuTTYgen to generate SSH keys. Invoke PuTTYgen on your local Windows host. Leave the Parameters at their default values. (RSA keys, 2048 bits.) Click Generate. Move your mouse to the.

As you may already know, Windows 10 includes built-in SSH software - both a client and a server! This feature is available in the OS starting in version 1803. When the client option is installed, we can use it to generate a new SSH key.

PuTTY is an excellent SSH client, but I would not recommend using its key generator as I've seen so many cases where it doesn't create proper keys for using with Linux/Unix OpenSSH servers. This has at least been my experience with at least five Windows users so I've stopped asking people to use PuTTY to create their keys.

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On Windows machines, the freeware open-source software PuTTY is the de-facto standard when it comes to SSH and Telnet. With Windows 10, Microsoft has finally listened to its users after years of them requesting an SSH client and server. By including an OpenSSH implementation, the value of the OS increases.

The provided SSH client is similar to the Linux client. At first glance, it appears to support the same features as its *NIX counterpart. It is a console app, so you should be able to start it from the command prompt.

To proceed, you need to enable the OpenSSH Client feature. Check out the following text:

Assuming that you have it installed, you can do the following.

To Generate an SSH key in Windows 10,

Open a new command prompt.
Type ssh-keygen and hit the Enter key.
The app will ask for the save location, offering C:usersyour user name.sshid_rsa by default.
Next, you will be prompted to enter a passphrase. You can just hit the Enter key to skip it.
Finally, you will see the fingerprint for your key and SHA256. The default algorithm is RSA 2048.

You are done. Your public key will be saved to the id_rsa.pub file, by default it is C:usersyour user name.sshid_rsa.pub. You can now upload this file to the target machine you want to access with SSH. Do not share your private SSH key (id_rsa) unless you know what you are doing!

SSH supports a number of other public key algorithms using with keys, such as:

rsa - this is a classic algorithm based on the difficulty of factoring large numbers. Recommended keys size - 2048 or above.
dsa - yet another legacy algorithm based on the difficulty of computing discrete logarithms. It is no longer recommended.
ecdsa - a new Digital Signature Algorithm standarized by the US government, using elliptic curves. It supports 256, 384, and 521 key sizes.
ed25519 - this algorithm is the latest options included in OpenSSH. Certain software lacks support for it.

You can specify the algorithm using the -t option and change the key size using the -b switch. Some examples:

That's it.

Also, see the following articles:

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While Encrypting a File with a Password from the Command Line using OpenSSLis very useful in its own right, the real power of the OpenSSL library is itsability to support the use of public key cryptograph for encrypting orvalidating data in an unattended manner (where the password is not required toencrypt) is done with public keys.

The Commands to Run

Generate a 2048 bit RSA Key

You can generate a public and private RSA key pair like this:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out private.pem 2048

That generates a 2048-bit RSA key pair, encrypts them with a password you provideand writes them to a file. You need to next extract the public key file. You willuse this, for instance, on your web server to encrypt content so that it canonly be read with the private key.

Export the RSA Public Key to a File

This is a command that is

openssl rsa -in private.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem

The -pubout flag is really important. Be sure to include it.

Next open the public.pem and ensure that it starts with-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----. This is how you know that this file is thepublic key of the pair and not a private key.

To check the file from the command line you can use the less command, like this:

less public.pem

Do Not Run This, it Exports the Private Key

A previous version of the post gave this example in error.

openssl rsa -in private.pem -out private_unencrypted.pem -outform PEM

The error is that the -pubout was dropped from the end of the command.That changes the meaning of the command from that of exporting the public keyto exporting the private key outside of its encrypted wrapper. Inspecting theoutput file, in this case private_unencrypted.pem clearly shows that the keyis a RSA private key as it starts with -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----.

Visually Inspect Your Key Files

It is important to visually inspect you private and public key files to makesure that they are what you expect. OpenSSL will clearly explain the nature ofthe key block with a -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- or -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----.

You can use less to inspect each of your two files in turn:

less private.pem to verify that it starts with a -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
less public.pem to verify that it starts with a -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

The next section shows a full example of what each key file should look like.

The Generated Key Files

The generated files are base64-encoded encryption keys in plain text format.If you select a password for your private key, its file will be encrypted withyour password. Be sure to remember this password or the key pair becomes useless.

The private.pem file looks something like this:

The public key, public.pem, file looks like:

Protecting Your Keys

Depending on the nature of the information you will protect, it’s important tokeep the private key backed up and secret. The public key can be distributedanywhere or embedded in your web application scripts, such as in your PHP,Ruby, or other scripts. Again, backup your keys!

Remember, if the key goes away the data encrypted to it is gone. Keeping aprinted copy of the key material in a sealed envelope in a bank safety depositbox is a good way to protect important keys against loss due to fire or harddrive failure.