Saturday, 1 June 2013

Why is my email address removed at the end of my matching public key file?

Why is my email address removed at the end of my matching public key file?

I tried ssh-ing to a server that uses RSA verification. I was already able to ssh to this server months back but I find out that I can't do so today.
I investigated the keys in my computer. I emailed my public key to the server's owner months back and I see that my attachment and my id_rsa.pub still matches. Next, I tried generating the public key for the private key currently in my computer.
.ssh$ ssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > ~/Documents/public_key.txt
Enter passphrase:
Then, I diff it to the one I sent over email months back.
Documents$ diff public_key.txt attach_public_key.txt
1c1
...
Upon visual inspection, it seems that the only difference is that attach_public_key.txt has my email address appended at the end. I then validate my hunch...
Documents$ cp rsa_public_key.txt noemail_public_key.txt
Documents$ vi noemail_public_key.txt # remove email add here
Documents$ diff public_key.txt noemail_public_key.txt
Documents$
Voila!
So, how come my private key no longer requires my email address on the matching public key? What should I do to be able to ssh to the server again? Should I tell the admin that my key was modified (isn't this alarming?) ? Or is there a way for me to tweak my local keys?

No comments:

Post a Comment