The server must also have password authentication enabled. You will also need a remote Linux server with root or sudo access on it.

To follow this tutorial you will need a client machine which should have a Windows or Linux operating system. Finally we will learn how to login to the remote server using the private key. We will copy the public key to the remote linux server and will make all the necessary SSH configurations. We will learn to generate key pair on both windows and linux operating systems.

It is important to generate the key pair on the client machine. With the help of this guide you will be able to enable key based authentication on multiple Linux flavors as the process is same for all major Linux operating systems. In this tutorial we will learn how to enable key based authentication on a Linux server. The private key should not be shared anywhere as a person having the private key will have full access to the server. This method of authentication is considered very secure as the private key is not shared on network making it very secure hence it is virtually impossible to brute force SSH server. If yes then the user is given access to the terminal. The server then checks if the description was successful or not. The user’s SSH agent decrypts the message using the private key and sends the phrase back to the server. The encrypted cipher is then sent to user’s computer.

For authentication purposes, the server encrypts a random phrase with the public key available on server. The public key is stored in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server and private key is possessed by the user. Key based authentication works with a pair of public and private keys. To prevent this you can either use services like Fail2Ban or you can use Key Based Authentication. Although the SSH protocol is considered secured as the traffic is always encrypted, it is still vulnerable to brute force attacks. Most of the time your VPS or Dedicated server will come with a password login. This connects you to the terminal of your linux server. To manage a Linux server remotely, the SSH protocol is used.

Windows terminal ssh key