The PuTTYgen program is part of PuTTY, an open source networking client for the Windows platform.

• Generate Public Key From Private Puttygen Drive
• Generate A Public Key

Generate Public Key From Private Puttygen Drive

Jul 19, 2013 Benefits of Public & Private SSH Keys. If your headless, or remote, VPS is visible over the Internet, you should use public key authentication instead of passwords, if at all possible. This is because SSH keys provide a more secure way of logging in compared to using a password alone.

• The public key is like the keyhole, as it can be installed on any door or device that the matching private key should have access to. In terms of server administration, any device that has your public key installed will be able to authenticate you using your private key when you send it. How to Generate a Public and Private Keypair. Windows Users.
• Jun 18, 2018  Start the PuTTYgen utility, by double-clicking on its.exe file For Type of key to generate, select RSA. In the Number of bits in a generated key field, specify either 2048 or 4096 (increasing the bits makes it harder to crack the key by brute-force methods).

Generate A Public Key

1. Download and install PuTTY or PuTTYgen.

   To download PuTTY or PuTTYgen, go to http://www.putty.org/ and click the You can download PuTTY here link.

2. Run the PuTTYgen program.
3. Set the Type of key to generate option to SSH-2 RSA.
4. In the Number of bits in a generated key box, enter 2048.
5. Click Generate to generate a public/private key pair.

   As the key is being generated, move the mouse around the blank area as directed.

6. (Optional) Enter a passphrase for the private key in the Key passphrase box and reenter it in the Confirm passphrase box.

   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.

7. Click Save private key to save the private key to a file. To adhere to file-naming conventions, you should give the private key file an extension of .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.
8. Select all of the characters in the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file box.

   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.

9. Right-click somewhere in the selected text and select Copy from the menu.
10. Open a text editor and paste the characters, just as you copied them. Start at the first character in the text editor, and do not insert any line breaks.
11. Save the text file in the same folder where you saved the private key, using the .pub extension to indicate that the file contains a public key.
12. If you or others are going to use an SSH client that requires the OpenSSH format for private keys (such as the ssh utility on Linux), export the private key:
    1. On the Conversions menu, choose Export OpenSSH key.
    2. Save the private key in OpenSSH format in the same folder where you saved the private key in .ppk format, using an extension such as .openssh to indicate the file's content.