SSH remote access with password or encryption keys

To connect to a server with the native Windows 10 client, type:

There are other famous SSH clients as indicated in section Alternatives for SSH clients. But the native Windows 10 client will probably be enough for what you need to do.

When it is the first access you need to inform that you trust the remote computer’s identity by answering yes, as indicated in Figure 1.

Then you enter your password, and that’s it. Connected!

Another form of authentication is to let the target computer know the source computer. In this case we create a pair of encryption keys on the source computer with the command ssh-keygen. Run and press Enter until done, as shown in Figure 2.

As also indicated in Figure 2, a pair of files are generated. We are interested in this demonstration in the public file id_rsa.pub. The private id_rsa file must be kept safe and never shared.

Then, we send the contents of the file id_rsa.pub, as exemplified in Figure 3, to the destination computer, the server. This content must be added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. If it does not exist, it must be created.

From now on, both your computer knows the server and the server knows your computer. Each computer has the public key of the other.

Make a new connection attempt and you’re done. Connected using keys without having to enter authentication data.

Hasta la vista.