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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T23:20:15+00:00

I’ve created a new linux instance on Amazon EC2, and as part of that

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I’ve created a new linux instance on Amazon EC2, and as part of that downloaded the .pem file to allow me to SSH in.

When I tried to ssh with:

ssh -i myfile.pem <public dns>

I got:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@         WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0644 for 'amazonec2.pem' are too open.
It is recommended that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: amazonec2.pem
Permission denied (publickey).

Following this post I tried to chmod +600 the .pem file, but now when I ssh I just get

Permission denied (publickey).

What school-boy error am I making here?
The .pem file is in my home folder (in macOS). Its permissions look like this:

-rw-------@   1 mattroberts  staff    1696 19 Nov 11:20 amazonec2.pem
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is wrong set of permissions on the file.

    Easily solved by executing –

    chmod 400 mykey.pem

    Taken from AWS instructions –

    Your key file must not be publicly viewable for SSH to work. Use this
    command if needed: chmod 400 mykey.pem

    400 protects it by making it read only and only for the owner.

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