×
The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.
On 5/26/2024 2:19 AM, Arnie Flangehead wrote:
I've read a couple of tutorials, but I'm stuck on the concept of public and
private keys.
Public and private keys are related by a complex mathematical equation.
You give your public key to everyone - you can even post it on your
public web site.
You keep your private key as secret as humanly possible.
You encrypt with the other party's public key (thus the name public key
encryption). They decrypt with the matching private key.
If you generate your private key from the public, what stops a baddy from
intercepting your public key and doing the same generation then
impersonating you?
You don't generate a private key from the public one - they are
generated together, in one single mathematical operation. The math is
one-directional; it is exceptionally difficult to work out what the
private half of the key pair is when all you have is the public half, or
a message encrypted with the public half. It also means that you can't
decrypt a message that you yourself encrypted with their public key -
you don't have their matching private key!
Do you get a different private key each time you generate from the public
key? Would this then be invalid for a connection you've used before? e.g.
If you test with one User Profile then switch to another.
You can only ever create a new pair of keys. You can't generate a new
private half and keep the same public half. This would break the math
that binds them.
One way to get some practise is to do all of the steps on systems that
you control - your Windows PC and your IBM i server.
https://ibmi-oss-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_setup/README.html?highlight=ssh
Step 6 in particular describes making a password-free SSH connexion
between your PC and IBM i. But do read the whole thing before starting
to execute any commands. The general idea of step 6 is that you will
create a key pair on your PC, and a key pair on your IBM i, and exchange
the PUBLIC key halves.
PuTTY on your PC and bash on your IBM i are super useful to become
accustomed to!
midrange.com
