May 20, 2018 Private keys are protected with DPAPI and stored in the HKCU registry hive. I released some PoC code here to extract and reconstruct the RSA private key from the registry. Using OpenSSH in Windows 10. The first thing I tested was using the OpenSSH utilities normally to generate a few key-pairs and adding them to the ssh-agent. To save the private key in the openssh format, go to Conversions-Export OpenSSH key ( if you did not define a passkey it will ask you to confirm that you do not want a pass key) Save it as 'idrsa' Now that the keys are saved. Start pagent and add the private key there ( the ppk file in Putty's format).
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Most authentication in Windows environments is done with a username-password pair.This works well for systems that share a common domain.When working across domains, such as between on-premise and cloud-hosted systems, it becomes more difficult.
By comparison, Linux environments commonly use public-key/private-key pairs to drive authentication.OpenSSH includes tools to help support this, specifically:
This document provides an overview of how to use these tools on Windows to begin using key authentication with SSH.If you are unfamiliar with SSH key management, we strongly recommend you review NIST document IR 7966 titled 'Security of Interactive and Automated Access Management Using Secure Shell (SSH).'
Key pairs refer to the public and private key files that are used by certain authentication protocols.
SSH public-key authentication uses asymmetric cryptographic algorithms to generate two key files – one 'private' and the other 'public'. The private key files are the equivalent of a password, and should protected under all circumstances. If someone acquires your private key, they can log in as you to any SSH server you have access to. The public key is what is placed on the SSH server, and may be shared without compromising the private key.
When using key authentication with an SSH server, the SSH server and client compare the public key for username provided against the private key. If the public key cannot be validated against the client-side private key, authentication fails.
Multi-factor authentication may be implemented with key pairs by requiring that a passphrase be supplied when the key pair is generated (see key generation below).During authentication the user is prompted for the passphrase, which is used along with the presence of the private key on the SSH client to authenticate the user.
Public keys have specific ACL requirements that, on Windows, equate to only allowing access to administrators and System.To make this easier,
To make key authentication easy with an SSH server, run the following commands from an elevated PowerShell prompt:
Since there is no user associated with the sshd service, the host keys are stored under ProgramDatassh.
To use key-based authentication, you first need to generate some public/private key pairs for your client.From PowerShell or cmd, use ssh-keygen to generate some key files.
This should display something like the following (where 'username' is replaced by your user name)
You can hit Enter to accept the default, or specify a path where you'd like your keys to be generated.At this point, you'll be prompted to use a passphrase to encrypt your private key files.The passphrase works with the key file to provide 2-factor authentication.For this example, we are leaving the passphrase empty.
Now you have a public/private ED25519 key pair(the .pub files are public keys and the rest are private keys):
Remember that private key files are the equivalent of a password should be protected the same way you protect your password.To help with that, use ssh-agent to securely store the private keys within a Windows security context, associated with your Windows login.To do that, start the ssh-agent service as Administrator and use ssh-add to store the private key.
After completing these steps, whenever a private key is needed for authentication from this client, ssh-agent will automatically retrieve the local private key and pass it to your SSH client.
Note
It is strongly recommended that you back up your private key to a secure location,then delete it from the local system, after adding it to ssh-agent.The private key cannot be retrieved from the agent.If you lose access to the private key, you would have to create a new key pairand update the public key on all systems you interact with.
To use the user key that was created above, the public key needs to be placed on the server into a text file called authorized_keys under usersusername.ssh.The OpenSSH tools include scp, which is a secure file-transfer utility, to help with this.
To move the contents of your public key (~.sshid_ed25519.pub) into a text file called authorized_keys in ~.ssh on your server/host.
This example uses the Repair-AuthorizedKeyPermissions function in the OpenSSHUtils module which was previously installed on the host in the instructions above.
These steps complete the configuration required to use key-based authentication with SSH on Windows.After this, the user can connect to the sshd host from any client that has the private key.
The PuTTYgen program is part of PuTTY, an open source networking client for the Windows platform.
Did you pay to getit with the laptop?Assuming that the answers to those two questions are yes and no, inthat order, almost certainly what you have on your laptop is only atrial version of Office. But I don't have the activation key. May i ask how do you go about getting youractivation key?Did Office 2010 come preinstalled on your laptop?
To download PuTTY or PuTTYgen, go to http://www.putty.org/ and click the You can download PuTTY here link.
As the key is being generated, move the mouse around the blank area as directed.
Note:
While a passphrase is not required, you should specify one as a security measure to protect the private key from unauthorized use. When you specify a passphrase, a user must enter the passphrase every time the private key is used.
.ppk
(PuTTY private key).
Note:
The.ppk
file extension indicates that the private key is in PuTTY's proprietary format. You must use a key of this format when using PuTTY as your SSH client. It cannot be used with other SSH client tools. Refer to the PuTTY documentation to convert a private key in this format to a different format.Make sure you select all the characters, not just the ones you can see in the narrow window. If a scroll bar is next to the characters, you aren't seeing all the characters.
.pub
extension to indicate that the file contains a public key.ssh
utility on Linux), export the private key:
.ppk
format, using an extension such as .openssh
to indicate the file's content.