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PuTTYgen

Created by Potthoff, Sebastian, last modified on 06. Nov 2024

PuTTYgen is part of PuTTY. You can download PuTTY from https://www.putty.org/ and install it on your machine.

Creating a new SSH key pair with PuTTYgen:

Destination Host - PuTTYgen is part of PuTTY. After you started the application you have to select the type of key and its length. - We recommend ECDSA and nistp384 - Klick on Generate to start generating the new key pair

Destination Host - To increase randomness while generating the key, you have to move your mouse cursor just below the green bar

Destination Host - After the key is generated you should add a - Comment - to be able to identify the key later - Key passphrase to secure your key - Then you have to save your public and private key. This is done separately.

Destination Host - Save the public key and give it a meaningful name. The file-extension can be for example .txt .

Destination Host - Save the private key and give it a meaningful name. The file extension of the private key is always .ppk . This is the file-format for PuTTY SSH keys.

After you saved everything, upload the public key in the IT Portal: https://www.uni-muenster.de/IT-Portal under Passwords and PINs - Public SSH Keys.

Never share your private key with anyone else. It should not be stored online and only reside on your local machine.