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OpenSSH RSA Authentication public key file format
Curiosity as always

There are two primary authentication methods for logging onto an SSH server as a user. The first is password based authentication, and the second is public key authentication. The public/private RSA key pair for public key authentication can be created using OpenSSH’s “ssh-keygen” application.

I’m not going to go into the exact method on accomplishing this because instructions can be found on countless other places on the internet. However, I was curious yesterday as to what exactly was in the public key (.pub) files created by ssh-keygen, as the data payload was larger than I expected (2232 bits for a 2048 bit key). I couldn’t find documentation on this ANYWHERE on the internet, so I downloaded the OpenSSH source code and looked at the generation code of the files. The format of the files is as follows:

  • The public key files are ASCII based text files with each public key taking up exactly one line.
  • Each line is formatted with 2 pieces of data as follows:
    KEY_TYPE DATA_PAYLOAD
  • KEY_TYPE is the type of public key, which in our case (and most cases nowadays) is “ssh-rsa”.
  • DATA_PAYLOAD contains the actual public key information encoded in base64 with the following format:
TypeByte lengthNameDescriptionDefault Value
unsigned int4KEY_TYPE_LENGTHLength of the next entry7
StringSee previousKEY_TYPESee abovessh-rsa
unsigned int4E_LENGTHLength of the next entry3
BigIntSee previousethis is the public key exponent in RSA65537
unsigned int4N_LENGTHLength of the next entryKEY_BIT_SIZE/8 (optional +1)
BigIntSee previousnthis is the “modulus for both the public and private keys” in RSAKey dependent

I also checked putty public key authentication files and they seemed to contain the exact same DATA_PAYLOAD.