[kalfusisagod]

Hello, I've searched this on the forum and google and couldn't find what I was looking for. Plus the search on this board can't search by subject line only and returns a ton of unrelated posts on "SSH public private keys" or any combination of that with or without quotes. I've read the wiki, have all my DynDNS and port forwarding set up. This is just a general question.

Let's just stick to the basics. My question is on SSH. I understand the concept of this but not the specifics. I've generated the public and private keys using Putty on windows and ssh on a mac and still don't understand what goes to what. For example, I know the public key needs to go into the "authorized keys" on the DD-WRT router but do I include EVERYTHING or just the key.

For example, my mac produces a public key of

ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1k...Bw4E= joe@ MacBook-Pro.local

while putty generates

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20120329"
AAAAB3NzaC1...deXU=
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

Do I have to just copy the key alone or do I need all the "meta data" or whatever it is? I also understand that line breaks need to be taken out, so I have been doing that.

Next question, do I paste the private key on the computer that I'm trying to use to SSH into my router? I've been SSHing into my router using my mac and pasted the private key into the known_hosts file under the .ssh folder but it keeps putting my public key in there. So this would be my known_host file on my Mac

domain.com,68.125.78.32 ssh-rsa MIBuw...XAUd <--- Private Key

Inside terminal on the Mac, I would run ssh root@domain.com and would get

The authenticity of host 'domain' (68.125.78.32)' can't be established
RSA key fingerprint is f6:xx:xx:xx:xx...
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)

Selecting no kicks me out and does nothing, selecting yes gets me into DD-WRT's ssh with my router password. After inspecting the known_host file on my Mac after selecting yes puts the ROUTER'S PUBLIC key in there. So my question is what is the point of the private key? And how do I know that my ssh is really secure using a public/private key pair? I can throw commands at my router through SSH but just want to ensure my connection is secure. Thank you.

[slobodan]

You could import the private key into puttygen and then save it as private and as public key in putty format. DD-WRT accepts copy/paste from puttygen.

[kalfusisagod]

so the public key is set into the host (dd wrt router) and the client (my macbook)? And the private key is ONLY used to recover the public key if lost? Thanks.

[slobodan]

[amrogers3]

So to follow up with question above....

I am using a mac with OSX Leopard 10.5

When using ssh-keygen I get something that looks like this:

ssh-rsa AAAAFASREFX%#ASDc== aaron@aarons-macbook-pro-15.local

Which isn't in the format:

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20120329"
AAAAB3NzaC1...deXU=
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

What do I need to do? Add headers to my key or use a different method to generate keys?

Thanks.

[hatcreek68]

I was just fighting this - and only was able to use the SSH key by logging in as ROOT not some other username.

also to reiterate what other's said: copy/paste public key from the putty window (to capture the right format), don't need to save the public key.

[Alozaros]

nope its not like that....🌝

[Alozaros]

for example add this key to ssh field in DD-WRT services

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEAqVwX3i/Eujwg92i+HkiWXWTDTdYqamXfb6gcMVtoW6cwVEC+EdjoIbWqvASFv1d8Dg24QMGZV4L3S3o9iJDCqqulw2O0Ul1qKT3kfI0jZBbFhH/9v1+YjBMlMEBMysWeRCu/gCXPi/wDxolpSSIIkmUqzEbw1d83Hr8LMcYSt6wQemQsy27oMAhHjYEMJT64zLN77h3EUeXxadG/W5OcrSoeuWVgYdjmPGQCp4lu3cUgkA6ZwhDDl5xZrEdIjG4/9zXylBUbxbylTsZllVOkd9ZRA9SODPtdm+rrc7QldBeTmdCtDfTkrP8qZr+7D114Smr8LatNiA9wl04xVgIz4w== rsa-key-20171223

unrar and use this private key in putty to log in
username is root as always

to load key into putty go to:
Category: Connection>SSH>Auth > on the right side click Browse and choose your key

[hatcreek68]