4 Command Line Interface

station and place the host public key in it. An entry for a public key in the known hosts file would appear similar to the following example:

10.1.0.54 1024 35 15684995401867669259333946775054617325313674890836547254 15020245593199868544358361651999923329781766065830956 10825913212890233 76546801726272571413428762941301196195566782 59566410486957427888146206 51941746772984865468615717739390164779355942303577413098022737087794545 24083971752646358058176716709574804776117

3.Import Client’s Public Key to the Switch – Use the copy tftp public-key command to copy a file containing the public key for all the SSH client’s granted management access to the switch. (Note that these clients must be configured locally on the switch with the username command as described on page 4-25.)The clients are subsequently authenticated using these keys. The current firmware only accepts public key files based on standard UNIX format as shown in the following example for an RSA Version 1 key:

1024 35 1341081685609893921040944920155425347631641921872958921143173880

05553616163105177594083868631109291232226828519254374603100937187721199

69631781366277414168985132049117204830339254324101637997592371449011938

00609025394840848271781943722884025331159521348610229029789827213532671

31629432532818915045306393916643 steve@192.168.1.19

4.Set the Optional Parameters – Set other optional parameters, including the authentication timeout, the number of retries, and the server key size.

5.Enable SSH Service – Use the ip ssh server command to enable the SSH server on the switch.

6.Configure Challenge-Response Authentication – When an SSH client attempts to contact the switch, the SSH server uses the host key pair to negotiate a session key and encryption method. Only clients that have a private key corresponding to the public keys stored on the switch can gain access. The following exchanges take place during this process:

a.The client sends its public key to the switch.

b.The switch compares the client's public key to those stored in memory.

c.If a match is found, the switch uses the public key to encrypt a random sequence of bytes, and sends this string to the client.

d.The client uses its private key to decrypt the bytes, and sends the decrypted bytes back to the switch.

e.The switch compares the decrypted bytes to the original bytes it sent. If the two sets match, this means that the client's private key corresponds to an authorized public key, and the client is authenticated.

Note: To use SSH with only password authentication, the host public key must still be given to the client, either during initial connection or manually entered into the known host file. However, you do not need to configure the client’s keys.

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