Question

I need to do the SSH key audit for GitHub, but I am not sure how do find my RSA key fingerprint. I originally followed a guide to generate an SSH key on Linux.

What is the command I need to enter to find my current RSA key fingerprint?

Answer 1

Run the following command to retrieve the SHA256 fingerprint of your SSH key (-l means "list" instead of create a new key, -f means "filename"):

$ ssh-keygen -lf /path/to/ssh/key

So for example, on my machine the command I ran was (using RSA public key):

$ ssh-keygen -lf ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
2048 00:11:22:33:44:55:66:77:88:99:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff /Users/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub (RSA)

To get the GitHub (MD5) fingerprint format with newer versions of ssh-keygen, run:

$ ssh-keygen -E md5 -lf <fileName>

Bonus information:

ssh-keygen -lf also works on known_hosts and authorized_keys files.

To find most public keys on Linux/Unix/OS X systems, run

$ find /etc/ssh /home/*/.ssh /Users/*/.ssh -name '*.pub' -o -name 'authorized_keys' -o -name 'known_hosts'

(If you want to see inside other users’ homedirs, you’ll have to be root or sudo.)

The ssh-add -l is very similar, but lists the fingerprints of keys added to your agent. (OS X users take note that magic passwordless SSH via Keychain is not the same as using ssh-agent.)