SSH Key Generation on AWS EC2

Task: Generate a New SSH Key on an AWS EC2

Instance Instance OS: Amazon Linux

Task Objective: Generate a new RSA SSH key pair inside the EC2 instance

Step-by-Step Commands:

1. SSH into the EC2 instance

ssh -i your-key.pem ec2-user@<ec2-public-ip>

2. Verify you are inside the EC2

 whoami

Output: ec2-user

3. Generate a new SSH key pair

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "new-key-inside-ec2"

When prompted:

- Press Enter to accept default file location - Press Enter twice for no pass

Sample Output:

❖ Generating public/private rsa key pair.
❖ Enter file in which to save the key (/home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa): [Press Enter]
❖ Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [Press Enter]
❖ Enter same passphrase again: [Press Enter]
❖ Your identification has been saved in /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa.
❖ Your public key has been saved in /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

4. List and verify SSH key files

ls -l ~/.ssh/

Expected Output: -rw------- 1 ec2-user ec2-user 3243 Jun 26 09:15 id_rsa

-rw-r--r-- 1 ec2-user ec2-user 743 Jun 26 09:15 id_rsa.pub

5. (Optional) View the Public Key

 cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Task Status: Completed Successfully

New SSH key pair generated at:

Private key: /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa

Public key: /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub