Silviu Mocanu

One of the preferred method of authentication on network devices is using SSH with a SSH public key. In order to be able to authenticate yourself, you have to generate a SSH key pair. A SSH key is composed of two parts, one private key (which should remain "private" and also should be password protected ) and one public key which should be installed on the SSH server in order to authenticate you. SSH client on Linux: In order to generate a SSH key pair on Linux, you will need to use "ssh-keygen" tool, which is a part of the "openssh-client" package on Debian-like operating systems: smocanu@debian7:~$ dpkg -S $(which ssh-keygen) openssh-client: /usr/bin/ssh-keygen or a part of "openssh" package on RedHat-like operating systems: smocanu@centos6 ~$ rpm -qf $(which ssh-keygen) openssh-5.3p1-94.el6.x86_64 The generating process is quite simple, just run the "ssh-keygen" command, and it will ask you the location of the new key ...

If you have to enable secure connections to your service(s), you will need to buy a certificate or generate a self signed certificate for it. If you have to buy one, you have to generate a private certificate and a certificate request. If you will use a self signed certificate, you will need to generate a private, a request and a public certificate. You can do that by using the ' openssl ' tool. First at all, you have to generate a password, I'm usually using ' apg ': smocanu@debian7:~$ apg -n1 -m8 -x8 -t tiWiejTo (ti-Wiej-To) After that we are ready to generate the private certificate, this one should be kept safely, no one else should have it. I'm generating a 512bits RSA certificate: smocanu@debian7:~$ openssl genrsa -des3 -out ss.example.com.key 512 Generating RSA private key, 512 bit long modulus ........................++++++++++++ ...................++++++++++++ e is 65537 (0x10001) Enter pass phrase for ss.example.com.key: Verifying - Ent...