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SSH private key, used for authentication or encryption?

July 28, 2015 1.6k views
Security DigitalOcean

I'm confused around the concept of SSH authentication. Is ssh key excange necessary for actually authenticating or just encrypting the login attempt and subsequent data exchange?? I mean isn't username/password used for authenticating?

In other words, if someone finds my user name and password by brute forcing would he be able to login without having hold of my client private key?

And why use a private* client* key instead of a public client key with a server private key?

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2 Answers
webdevguru July 28, 2015

Authentication
the private key is an alternative to a password, so a username + private key would be used and much more difficult to brute force (much much more complex)

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  • user000 July 28, 2015

    I've gone through the ssh key generation and installation but when connecting to the server it always asks me for a username and password? What do I do wrong?

  • webdevguru July 28, 2015

    user000, by default Passwords are still allowed to be used
    Either your public key isn't in the correct place on your server, or your SSH Client isn't attempting to use the private key (could be permissions issue on either side too)

  • user000 July 28, 2015

    and if I disable the username/password scheme and use ssh keys instead, what happens with sftp?
    is there a simillar process for sftp as well?

  • webdevguru July 28, 2015

    SFTP is over SSH so it support PubKey auth too, you'd just need a supporting SFTP Client (like FileZilla)

  • user000 July 28, 2015

    thank you very much for your replies

user000 July 28, 2015
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