{"id":7746,"date":"2021-02-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jumpcloud.com\/blog\/?p=7746"},"modified":"2024-08-14T17:02:42","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T21:02:42","slug":"what-are-ssh-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jumpcloud.com\/blog\/what-are-ssh-keys","title":{"rendered":"What are SSH Keys?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you spend enough time in an IT environment and with the rise of cloud infrastructure such as AWS, you will likely come across the term SSH keys. If you\u2019ve already come across this IT term, then you might find yourself wondering, what are SSH keys?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SSH (Secure Shell) keys are an access credential that is used in the SSH protocol and they are foundational to modern Infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before this post delves into an explanation on what are SSH keys, let\u2019s take a quick look at the SSH protocol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The History of The SSH Protocol<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first version of the SSH protocol was developed in the summer of 1995 by Tatu Ylonen. Tatu was a researcher at the University of Helsinki when a sniffing attack was discovered on the university network. A sniffing attack intercepts and logs the traffic that takes place on a network and can provide attackers with usernames and passwords which can then be used to gain access to critical IT assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of credentials were impacted, including those belonging to community partnerships. This sniffing attack motivated Tatu to figure out how to make networks more secure, and this ultimately led to the creation of the SSH protocol (SSH.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the SSH protocol is widely used to login remotely from one system into another, and its strong encryption makes it ideal to carry out tasks such as issuing remote commands and remotely managing network infrastructure and other vital system components. This is especially important in the era of cloud infrastructure and remote work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To use the SSH protocol, a couple pieces of software need to be installed. The remote systems need to have a piece of software called an SSH daemon, and the system used to issue commands and manage the remote servers needs to have a piece of software called the SSH client. These pieces of software are necessary to create a proper communication channel using the SSH protocol (DigitalOcean<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, SSH keys are an authentication method used to gain access to an encrypted connection between systems and then ultimately use that connection to manage the remote system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are SSH keys?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

SSH keys come in many sizes, but a popular choice is an RSA 2048-bit encryption, which is comparable to a 617 digit long password. On Windows systems, it is possible to generate your own SSH key pair<\/a> by downloading and using an SSH client like PuTTY. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Mac and Linux systems, it is possible to generate an SSH key pair using a terminal window. Watch the video below to find out how to generate your own RSA key pair on Mac and Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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