11

Is there any way to get SFTP server's public key from any Sftp client or by using any tool? I have access (username/password) to connect to production SFTP remote server and I would like to find the public key from any SFTP client or by using any other tool. My intention is to use that public key in Java JSCh library and to connect to the SFTP server.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
18

The only correct way is to ask the server administrator to provide you the host key.

If you retrieve the host key remotely yourself, you cannot really trust the key, as you can be under a Man-in-the-middle attack already.

Anyway, the easiest way is to use ssh-keyscan tool:

> ssh-keyscan example.com
# example.com:22 SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.3
example.com ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEA0hVqZOvZ7yWgie9OHdTORJVI5fJJoH1yEGamAd5G3werH0z7e9ybtq1mGUeRkJtea7bzru0ISR0EZ9HIONoGYrDmI7S+BiwpDBUKjva4mAsvzzvsy6Ogy/apkxm6Kbcml8u4wjxaOw3NKzKqeBvR3pc+nQVA+SJUZq8D2XBRd4EDUFXeLzwqwen9G7gSLGB1hJkSuRtGRfOHbLUuCKNR8RV82i3JvlSnAwb3MwN0m3WGdlJA8J+5YAg4e6JgSKrsCObZK7W1R6iuyuH1zA+dtAHyDyYVHB4FnYZPL0hgz2PSb9c+iDEiFcT/lT4/dQ+kRW6DYn66lS8peS8zCJ9CSQ==

If you are on Windows, note that the OpenSSH with ssh-keyscan is built-in in recent versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. For older Windows versions, you can get it from Win32-OpenSSH project or Git for Windows.

For more options and background information, see my article Where do I get SSH host key fingerprint to authorize the server?

Improve this answer
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .