Jul 10, 2018 man RSAprivateencrypt. RSAprivateencrypt signs the flen bytes at from (usually a message digest with an algorithm identifier) using the private key rsa and stores the signature in to. To must point to RSAsize(rsa) bytes of memory. Padding denotes one of the following modes: RSAPKCS1PADDING PKCS #1 v1.5 padding.
I tried to generate the keys with 'ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C '[email protected]' -f /.ssh/lsail-mikemittererat-eu-west-1.pem' I also tried to generate a key on AWS/S2, dowloaded it, generated a public key out of the private key and uploaded it to LightSail - the same result. It doesn't work. May 15, 2015 SSL Certificates installation on BITNAMI Server. Generate the “csr file” and “private key file” by executing following command on your bitnami cloud hosting server. Openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout sslcertificateprivate.key -out server.csr/stextbox 2 – Now submit the csr file to the ssl certificate providers.
With a secure shell (SSH) key pair, you can create a Linux virtual machine on Azure that defaults to using SSH keys for authentication, eliminating the need for passwords to sign in. VMs created with the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Resource Manager templates, or other tools can include your SSH public key as part of the deployment, which sets up SSH key authentication for SSH connections.
This article provides detailed background and steps to create and manage an SSH RSA public-private key file pair for SSH client connections. If you want quick commands, see How to create an SSH public-private key pair for Linux VMs in Azure.
For additional ways to generate and use SSH keys on a Windows computer, see How to use SSH keys with Windows on Azure.
SSH is an encrypted connection protocol that allows secure sign-ins over unsecured connections. SSH is the default connection protocol for Linux VMs hosted in Azure. Although SSH itself provides an encrypted connection, using passwords with SSH connections still leaves the VM vulnerable to brute-force attacks or guessing of passwords. A more secure and preferred method of connecting to a VM using SSH is by using a public-private key pair, also known as SSH keys.
The public key is placed on your Linux VM, or any other service that you wish to use with public-key cryptography.
The private key remains on your local system. Protect this private key. Do not share it.
When you use an SSH client to connect to your Linux VM (which has the public key), the remote VM tests the client to make sure it possesses the private key. If the client has the private key, it's granted access to the VM.
Depending on your organization's security policies, you can reuse a single public-private key pair to access multiple Azure VMs and services. You do not need a separate pair of keys for each VM or service you wish to access.
Your public key can be shared with anyone, but only you (or your local security infrastructure) should possess your private key.
The SSH private key should have a very secure passphrase to safeguard it. This passphrase is just to access the private SSH key file and is not the user account password. When you add a passphrase to your SSH key, it encrypts the private key using 128-bit AES, so that the private key is useless without the passphrase to decrypt it. If an attacker stole your private key and that key did not have a passphrase, they would be able to use that private key to sign in to any servers that have the corresponding public key. If a private key is protected by a passphrase, it cannot be used by that attacker, providing an additional layer of security for your infrastructure on Azure.
Azure currently supports SSH protocol 2 (SSH-2) RSA public-private key pairs with a minimum length of 2048 bits. Other key formats such as ED25519 and ECDSA are not supported.
When you create an Azure VM by specifying the public key, Azure copies the public key (in the .pub
format) to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
folder on the VM. SSH keys in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
are used to challenge the client to match the corresponding private key on an SSH connection. In an Azure Linux VM that uses SSH keys for authentication, Azure configures the SSHD server to not allow password sign-in, only SSH keys. Therefore, by creating an Azure Linux VM with SSH keys, you can help secure the VM deployment and save yourself the typical post-deployment configuration step of disabling passwords in the sshd_config
file.
If you do not wish to use SSH keys, you can set up your Linux VM to use password authentication. If your VM is not exposed to the Internet, using passwords may be sufficient. However, you still need to manage your passwords for each Linux VM and maintain healthy password policies and practices, such as minimum password length and regular updates. Using SSH keys reduces the complexity of managing individual credentials across multiple VMs.
To create the keys, a preferred command is ssh-keygen
, which is available with OpenSSH utilities in the Azure Cloud Shell, a macOS or Linux host, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and other tools. ssh-keygen
asks a series of questions and then writes a private key and a matching public key.
SSH keys are by default kept in the ~/.ssh
directory. If you do not have a ~/.ssh
directory, the ssh-keygen
command creates it for you with the correct permissions.
The following ssh-keygen
command generates 2048-bit SSH RSA public and private key files by default in the ~/.ssh
directory. If an SSH key pair exists in the current location, those files are overwritten.
The following example shows additional command options to create an SSH RSA key pair. If an SSH key pair exists in the current location, those files are overwritten.
Command explained
ssh-keygen
= the program used to create the keys
-m PEM
= format the key as PEM
-t rsa
= type of key to create, in this case in the RSA format
-b 4096
= the number of bits in the key, in this case 4096
-C 'azureuser@myserver'
= a comment appended to the end of the public key file to easily identify it. Normally an email address is used as the comment, but use whatever works best for your infrastructure.
-f ~/.ssh/mykeys/myprivatekey
= the filename of the private key file, if you choose not to use the default name. A corresponding public key file appended with .pub
is generated in the same directory. The directory must exist.
-N mypassphrase
= an additional passphrase used to access the private key file.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/azureuser/.ssh/id_rsa): ~/.ssh/id_rsa
The key pair name for this article. Having a key pair named id_rsa
is the default; some tools might expect the id_rsa
private key file name, so having one is a good idea. The directory ~/.ssh/
is the default location for SSH key pairs and the SSH config file. If not specified with a full path, ssh-keygen
creates the keys in the current working directory, not the default ~/.ssh
.
~/.ssh
directoryGit generate ssh key gitlab. Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
It is strongly recommended to add a passphrase to your private key. Without a passphrase to protect the key file, anyone with the file can use it to sign in to any server that has the corresponding public key. Adding a passphrase offers more protection in case someone is able to gain access to your private key file, giving you time to change the keys.
If you use the Azure CLI to create your VM, you can optionally generate SSH public and private key files by running the az vm create command with the --generate-ssh-keys
option. The keys are stored in the ~/.ssh directory. Note that this command option does not overwrite keys if they already exist in that location.
To create a Linux VM that uses SSH keys for authentication, provide your SSH public key when creating the VM using the Azure portal, CLI, Resource Manager templates, or other methods. When using the portal, you enter the public key itself. If you use the Azure CLI to create your VM with an existing public key, specify the value or location of this public key by running the az vm create command with the --ssh-key-value
option.
If you're not familiar with the format of an SSH public key, you can see your public key by running cat
as follows, replacing ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
with your own public key file location:
Output is similar to the following (here redacted):
If you copy and paste the contents of the public key file into the Azure portal or a Resource Manager template, make sure you don't copy any additional whitespace or introduce additional line breaks. For example, if you use macOS, you can pipe the public key file (by default, ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
) to pbcopy to copy the contents (there are other Linux programs that do the same thing, such as xclip
).
If you prefer to use a public key that is in a multiline format, you can generate an RFC4716 formatted key in a pem container from the public key you previously created.
To create a RFC4716 formatted key from an existing SSH public key:
With the public key deployed on your Azure VM, and the private key on your local system, SSH to your VM using the IP address or DNS name of your VM. Replace azureuser and myvm.westus.cloudapp.azure.com in the following command with the administrator user name and the fully qualified domain name (or IP address):
If you provided a passphrase when you created your key pair, enter the passphrase when prompted during the sign-in process. (The server is added to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts
folder, and you won't be asked to connect again until the public key on your Azure VM changes or the server name is removed from ~/.ssh/known_hosts
.)
If the VM is using the just-in-time access policy, you need to request access before you can connect to the VM. For more information about the just-in-time policy, see Manage virtual machine access using the just in time policy.
To avoid typing your private key file passphrase with every SSH sign-in, you can use ssh-agent
to cache your private key file passphrase. If you are using a Mac, the macOS Keychain securely stores the private key passphrase when you invoke ssh-agent
.
Verify and use ssh-agent
and ssh-add
to inform the SSH system about the key files so that you do not need to use the passphrase interactively.
Now add the private key to ssh-agent
using the command ssh-add
.
The private key passphrase is now stored in ssh-agent
.
If you have already created a VM, you can install the new SSH public key to your Linux VM with a command similar to the following:
You can create and configure an SSH config file (~/.ssh/config
) to speed up log-ins and to optimize your SSH client behavior.
The following example shows a simple configuration that you can use to quickly sign in as a user to a specific VM using the default SSH private key.
Add configuration settings appropriate for your host VM.
You can add configurations for additional hosts to enable each to use its own dedicated key pair. See SSH config file for more advanced configuration options.
Now that you have an SSH key pair and a configured SSH config file, you are able to sign in to your Linux VM quickly and securely. When you run the following command, SSH locates and loads any settings from the Host myvm
block in the SSH config file.
The first time you sign in to a server using an SSH key, the command prompts you for the passphrase for that key file.
Next up is to create Azure Linux VMs using the new SSH public key. Azure VMs that are created with an SSH public key as the sign-in are better secured than VMs created with the default sign-in method, passwords.
-->Creating and managing keys is an important part of the cryptographic process. Symmetric algorithms require the creation of a key and an initialization vector (IV). The key must be kept secret from anyone who should not decrypt your data. The IV does not have to be secret, but should be changed for each session. Asymmetric algorithms require the creation of a public key and a private key. The public key can be made public to anyone, while the private key must known only by the party who will decrypt the data encrypted with the public key. This section describes how to generate and manage keys for both symmetric and asymmetric algorithms.
The symmetric encryption classes supplied by the .NET Framework require a key and a new initialization vector (IV) to encrypt and decrypt data. Whenever you create a new instance of one of the managed symmetric cryptographic classes using the parameterless constructor, a new key and IV are automatically created. Anyone that you allow to decrypt your data must possess the same key and IV and use the same algorithm. Generally, a new key and IV should be created for every session, and neither the key nor IV should be stored for use in a later session.
To communicate a symmetric key and IV to a remote party, you would usually encrypt the symmetric key by using asymmetric encryption. Sending the key across an insecure network without encrypting it is unsafe, because anyone who intercepts the key and IV can then decrypt your data. For more information about exchanging data by using encryption, see Creating a Cryptographic Scheme.
The following example shows the creation of a new instance of the TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider class that implements the TripleDES algorithm.
When the previous code is executed, a new key and IV are generated and placed in the Key and IV properties, respectively.
Sometimes you might need to generate multiple keys. In this situation, you can create a new instance of a class that implements a symmetric algorithm and then create a new key and IV by calling the GenerateKey and GenerateIV methods. The following code example illustrates how to create new keys and IVs after a new instance of the symmetric cryptographic class has been made.
When the previous code is executed, a key and IV are generated when the new instance of TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider is made. Another key and IV are created when the GenerateKey and GenerateIV methods are called.
The .NET Framework provides the RSACryptoServiceProvider and DSACryptoServiceProvider classes for asymmetric encryption. These classes create a public/private key pair when you use the parameterless constructor to create a new instance. Asymmetric keys can be either stored for use in multiple sessions or generated for one session only. While the public key can be made generally available, the private key should be closely guarded.
A public/private key pair is generated whenever a new instance of an asymmetric algorithm class is created. After a new instance of the class is created, the key information can be extracted using one of two methods:
The ToXmlString method, which returns an XML representation of the key information.
The ExportParameters method, which returns an RSAParameters structure that holds the key information.
Both methods accept a Boolean value that indicates whether to return only the public key information or to return both the public-key and the private-key information. An RSACryptoServiceProvider class can be initialized to the value of an RSAParameters structure by using the ImportParameters method.
Asymmetric private keys should never be stored verbatim or in plain text on the local computer. If you need to store a private key, you should use a key container. For more on how to store a private key in a key container, see How to: Store Asymmetric Keys in a Key Container.
The following code example creates a new instance of the RSACryptoServiceProvider class, creating a public/private key pair, and saves the public key information to an RSAParameters structure.