SSH Keys

How to add your public SSH key to another host:

Create SSH key (on your host):

$ ssh-keygen

Keys will be saved to
/home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa <- private key
/home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub <- public key
  1. Copy the contents of the public key (id_rsa.pub)
  2. Save the contents on the victim machine in the authorized_keys file (if it does not exist, create it) authorized_keys location:
     /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys

     root's authorized_keys location
     /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Once the key is saved in the authorized_keys, you will not need a password to sign in

Use your private key (generated with the public key using ssh-keygen) to sign in:

Make sure to update the correct key-permissions first:

$ chmod 600 id_rsa

$ ssh -i id_rsa user@host

If you get this: # ssh: too many authentication failures

Do this:

You can check it first with: ssh -v

and then just to clean up all keys with: ssh-add -D

as a quick and dirty solution.

Other Notes


ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no cassie@192.168.45.167

ssh-keyscan -H 192.168.45.167 >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

These are different ways to try and add your kali machine to the known_hosts file, if needed.