Intro

My notes on SSH tools

Generate Public + Private Keys for SSH

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

The private key (which you must keep secret) will be written to ~/.ssh/id_rsa. Your public key, which can be shared, will be stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

You must then copy the public key to the servers you intend to login via SSH.

ssh-copy-id <username>@<server hostname>

You can also copy the id_rsa.pub directly to the server and then append it to the authorized_keys files. The authorized keys are by default configured in .ssh/authorized_keys in the user's home directory

Other Resources

WikiHow - SSH
Ubuntu’s documentation: SSH/OpenSSH/Keys
SSH’s documentation: Generate a New SSH Key, Authorized_keys File in SSH, Configuring Authorized Keys for OpenSSH
SSH Academy has good information on SSH and IAM: SSH Academy

SSH Terminals

CygWin has SSH built in.
Putty
MobaXterm - my favorite, includes secure copy to move files between Windows and Linux
Windows Subsystem for Linux comes with SSH preinstalled.

SSH Academy’s Best free SSH clients for Windows

Commands

Login to remote computer.

ssh -p <optional port number> <username>@<remote hostname>

Specify the identity (private key file) with the -i
ssh -i sshkey.private bandit14@localhost

Copy file to remote computer

scp localfile.txt <username>@<remote hostname>:<path in remote file system>

SSH Scanners

Qualys has an SSH scanning tool to detect access with common passwords