13.12.2020

Openssl Generate Ssh Ecdsa Key

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OpenSSL provides two command line tools for working with keys suitable for Elliptic Curve (EC) algorithms:

  1. Ssh Keygen Ecdsa
  2. Openssl Generate Ssh Ecdsa Key Fingerprint
  3. Openssl Ecdsa With Sha256

The only Elliptic Curve algorithms that OpenSSL currently supports are Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman (ECDH) for key agreement and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for signing/verifying.

  1. Reasons for importing keys include wanting to make a backup of a private key (generated keys are non-exportable, for security reasons), or if the private key is provided by an external source. This document will guide you through using the OpenSSL command line tool to generate a key pair which you can then import into a YubiKey.
  2. Dec 28, 2013  8 thoughts on “ Creating Self-Signed ECDSA SSL Certificate using OpenSSL ” aprogrammer January 13, 2015 at 22:31. Thanks for the post. I found many usefull commands to generate csr, key and self-signed crt on the fly with one command in non-interactive mode.
  3. How to Create SSH Keys with OpenSSH on MacOS or Linux Validated on 28 August 2019 • Posted on 19 June 2018 DigitalOcean Droplets are Linux-based virtual machines (VMs) that run on top of virtualized hardware. Each Droplet you create is a new server you can use, either standalone or as part of a larger, cloud-based infrastructure.

Feb 12, 2016  Creating ECDSA SSL Certificates in 3 Easy Steps. Feb 12, 2016. I've previously written about creating SSL certificates. Times have changed, and ECC is the way of the future. Today I'm going to revisit that post with creating ECDSA SSL certificates as well as how to get your certificate signed by Let's Encrypt. Generating an ECDSA Key. Apr 12, 2018 SSH-key-based authentication provides a more secure alternative to password-based authentication. In this tutorial we'll learn how to set up SSH key-based authentication on an Ubuntu 16.04 installation.

x25519, ed25519 and ed448 aren't standard EC curves so you can't use ecparams or ec subcommands to work with them. If you need to generate x25519 or ed25519 keys then see the genpkey subcommand.

EC Private Key File Formats[edit]

By default OpenSSL will work with PEM files for storing EC private keys. These are text files containing base-64 encoded data. A typical traditional format private key file in PEM format will look something like the following, in a file with a '.pem' extension:

Or, in an encrypted form like this:

You may also encounter PKCS8 format private keys in PEM files. These look like this:

Or, in an encrypted form like this:

PKCS8 private key files, like the above, are capable of holding many different types of private key - not just EC keys.

You can convert between these formats if you like. All of the conversion commands can read either the encrypted or unencrypted forms of the files however you must specify whether you want the output to be encrypted or not. To convert a PKCS8 file to a traditional encrypted EC format use:

You can replace the first argument 'aes-128-cbc' with any other valid openssl cipher name (see Manual:enc(1) for a list of valid cipher names). To convert a PKCS8 file to a traditional unencrypted EC format, just drop the first argument:

Or to convert from a traditional EC format to an encrypted PKCS8 format use:

Or to a non-encrypted PKCS8 format use:

Note that by default in the above traditional format EC Private Key files are not encrypted (you have to explicitly state that the file should be encrypted, and what cipher to use), whilst for PKCS8 files the opposite is true. The default is to encrypt - you have to explicitly state that you do not want encryption applied if appropriate using the '-nocrypt' option.

As well as PEM format all of the above types of key file can also be stored in DER format. This is a binary format and so is not directly human readable - unlike a PEM file. A PEM file is essentially just DER data encoded using base 64 encoding rules with a header and footer added. Often it is more convenient to work with PEM files for this reason.

The openssl commands typically have options '-inform DER' or '-outform DER' to specify that the input or output file is DER respectively. So for example the command to convert a PKCS8 file to a traditional encrypted EC format in DER is the same as above, but with the addition of '-outform DER':

Note that you cannot encrypt a traditional format EC Private Key in DER format (and in fact if you attempt to do so the argument is silently ignored!). The same is not true for PKCS8 files - these can still be encrypted even in DER format. So for example the following will convert a traditional format key file to an ecrypted PKCS8 format DER encoded key:

EC Public Key File Formats[edit]

EC Public Keys are also stored in PEM files. A typical EC public key looks as follows:

This format is used to store all types of public keys in OpenSSL not just EC keys.

It is possible to create a public key file from a private key file (although obviously not the other way around!):

As above a DER encoded version can be created using '-outform DER':

Generating EC Keys and Parameters[edit]

An EC Parameters file contains all of the information necessary to define an Elliptic Curve that can then be used for cryptographic operations (for OpenSSL this means ECDH and ECDSA). OpenSSL contains a large set of pre-defined curves that can be used. The full list of built-in curves can be obtained through the following command:

An EC parameters file can then be generated for any of the built-in named curves as follows:

Replace secp256k1 in the above with whichever curve you are interested in.

Keys can be generated from the ecparam command, either through a pre-existing parameters file or directly by selecting the name of the curve. To generate a private/public key pair from a pre-eixsting parameters file use the following:

Or to do the equivalent operation without a parameters file use the following:

Information on the parameters that have been used to generate the key are embedded in the key file itself.

By default, when creating a parameters file, or generating a key, openssl will only store the name of the curve in the generated parameters or key file, not the full set of explicit parameters associated with that name. For example:

This will simply confirm the name of the curve in the parameters file by printing out the following:

If you wish to examine the specific details of the parameters associated with a particular named curve then this can be achieved as follows:

The above command shows the details for a built-in named curve from a file, but this can also be done directly using the '-name' argument instead of '-in'. The output will look similar to the following:

The meaning of each of these parameters is discussed further on this page.

Parameters and key files can be generated to include the full explicit parameters instead of just the name of the curve if desired. This might be important if, for example, not all the target systems know the details of the named curve. In OpenSSL version 1.0.2 new named curves have been added such as brainpool512t1. Attempting to use a parameters file or key file in versions of OpenSSL less than 1.0.2 with this curve will result in an error:

This problem can be avoided if explicit parameters are used instead. So under OpenSSL 1.0.2 you could create a parameters file like this:

Looking at the parameters file you will notice that it is now much longer:

The full parameters are included rather than just the name. This can now be processed by versions of OpenSSL less than 1.0.2. So under 1.0.1:

This will correctly display the parameters, even though this version of OpenSSL does not know about this curve.

The same is true of key files. So to generate a key with explicit parameters:

This key file can now be processed by versions of openssl that do not know about the brainpool curve.

It should be noted however that once the parameters have been converted from the curve name format into explicit parameters it is not possible to change them back again, i.e. there is no utility to take a set of explicit parameters and work out which named curve they are associated with.

Ssh Keygen Ecdsa

See also[edit]

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With a secure shell (SSH) key pair, you can create virtual machines (VMs) in Azure that use SSH keys for authentication, eliminating the need for passwords to sign in. This article shows you how to quickly generate and use an SSH public-private key file pair for Linux VMs. You can complete these steps with the Azure Cloud Shell, a macOS or Linux host, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and other tools that support OpenSSH.

Note

VMs created using SSH keys are by default configured with passwords disabled, which greatly increases the difficulty of brute-force guessing attacks.

For more background and examples, see Detailed steps to create SSH key pairs.

For additional ways to generate and use SSH keys on a Windows computer, see How to use SSH keys with Windows on Azure.

Supported SSH key formats

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.

Create an SSH key pair

Use the ssh-keygen command to generate SSH public and private key files. By default, these files are created in the ~/.ssh directory. You can specify a different location, and an optional password (passphrase) to access the private key file. If an SSH key pair with the same name exists in the given location, those files are overwritten.

The following command creates an SSH key pair using RSA encryption and a bit length of 4096:

If you use the Azure CLI to create your VM with the az vm create command, you can optionally generate SSH public and private key files using the --generate-ssh-keys option. The key files are stored in the ~/.ssh directory unless specified otherwise with the --ssh-dest-key-path option. The --generate-ssh-keys option will not overwrite existing key files, instead returning an error. In the following command, replace VMname and RGname with your own values:

Provide an SSH public key when deploying a VM

To create a Linux VM that uses SSH keys for authentication, specify your SSH public key when creating the VM using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager templates, or other methods:

If you're not familiar with the format of an SSH public key, you can display your public key with the following cat command, replacing ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub with the path and filename of your own public key file if needed:

A typical public key value looks like this example:

If you copy and paste the contents of the public key file to use in the Azure portal or a Resource Manager template, make sure you don't copy any trailing whitespace. To copy a public key in macOS, you can pipe the public key file to pbcopy. Similarly in Linux, you can pipe the public key file to programs such as xclip.

The public key that you place on your Linux VM in Azure is by default stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, unless you specified a different location when you created the key pair. To use the Azure CLI 2.0 to create your VM with an existing public key, specify the value and optionally the location of this public key using the az vm create command with the --ssh-key-values option. In the following command, replace VMname, RGname, and keyFile with your own values:

If you want to use multiple SSH keys with your VM, you can enter them in a space-separated list, like this --ssh-key-values sshkey-desktop.pub sshkey-laptop.pub.

SSH into your VM

With the public key deployed on your Azure VM, and the private key on your local system, SSH into your VM using the IP address or DNS name of your VM. In the following command, replace azureuser and myvm.westus.cloudapp.azure.com with the administrator user name and the fully qualified domain name (or IP address):

Openssl Generate Ssh Ecdsa Key Fingerprint

If you specified a passphrase when you created your key pair, enter that passphrase when prompted during the login process. The VM is added to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, and you won't be asked to connect again until either 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.

Next steps

Openssl Ecdsa With Sha256

  • For more information on working with SSH key pairs, see Detailed steps to create and manage SSH key pairs.

  • If you have difficulties with SSH connections to Azure VMs, see Troubleshoot SSH connections to an Azure Linux VM.