Often when dealing with Linux based servers or services such as Git from within Microsoft Windows, a user needs to have the ability to manage and use SSH keys.
SSH Keys are one of the main authentication mechanisms used when dealing with Unix based operating systems, and services such as GIT, which also utilize SSH keys as a way of authenticating access to code repositories.
The purpose of this article is to cover how to use PuTTY and PuTTYGen to create, manage, and use SSH keys from within a Windows environment that can be utilized when working with any server or services that require SSH key-based authentication.
1. Access to a Windows Workstation:
As this article covers working with PuTTY and PuTTYGen from within Windows, access to a Microsoft Windows workstation or VM is required.
2. Download PuTTY and PuTTYGen:
This article will be performing steps using both PuTTY and PuTTYGen. PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed for the Windows platform. The software is open source and is used to instantiate a connection from Windows to any server or service that utilizes either SSH, Telnet, or Both.
PuTTYgen is an SSH key generator tool for creating SSH keys for use with the PuTTY application. It is analogous to the ssh-keygen command-line tool found natively on most Unix based operating systems.
PuTTYGen can be used to create public and private key pairs, that are in the proper .ppk file format, required by PuTTY to work. The tool also has the ability to convert SSH key pairs from and to other formats.
Download PuttyGen
Downloading PuTTY
When downloading Putty, and PuTTYGen, you have the option of downloading the installer, or the standalone portable editions. Either of these options will work identically.
If you don't want to perform an actual install of the application, then the portable executable can be downloaded and ran effectively without requiring any modification to your current Windows Environment.
Note that if you do install PuTTY using the installable .msi package, PuTTYGen is also automatically installed as part of that installer package. There is no need to download and install a separate executable just for PuTTYGen.
Generate a KeyPair
First, let's walk through creating a new SSH KeyPair on Windows using PuTTYGen.
1. Open PuTTYGen:
First, navigate to your downloads directory or the directory where the PuTTYGen standalone executable is located and launch PuTTYGen, or if you chose to install PuTTY using the downloadable .msi file, then from your start menu, find and launch the PuTTYGen application.
2. Generate KeyPair:
Next, we will use PuTTYGen to create a new SSH RSA KeyPair. To do so, from the main application click on the Generate button to start the key generation process.
Once the Generate button has been clicked, then move your mouse in the blank area to create entropy data that will be used to construct your new KeyPair. Once the key has been generated you will be returned to the main application view, with the newly generated key loaded into the application session.
Conclusion
The final result of this tutorial leaves us with a better understanding of how PuTTY and PuTTYGen work, and how to manage our RSA Keys using PuTTYGen on a Windows Workstation. By following the steps outlined above, we should now have an RSA SSH KeyPair that will allow us to log into servers, services, or AWS instances from our Windows workstation using our new PPK formatted RSA/SSH Private Key via PuTTY.
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