Generating a key for your SSH login (step 1)
Beware of SSL proxies!
Before you continue please check your HTTPS connection for inconsistencies! Unfortunately there are by now means of eavesdropping on connections that are believed to be secure - but in this case that would be counterproductive!Should you happen to discover anything, do not, under any circumstances, continue with SSH key generation!
The problem with passwords
When login credentials have to be provided anywhere, one particular problem
occurs over and over again, especially as far as passwords are concerned:
Either too weak passwords are chosen that can be guessed with ease, or the
exact same password is set at multiple locations – or even a combination of
both. No matter what, in any case it's an easy feat for an attacker to gain
access to a protected area – most often a simple dictionary-based attack is
entirely sufficient. This situation admittedly is far from satisfactory, and
even passwords deemed to be secure can be easily guessed if one doesn't take
sufficient care. Furthermore, several aspects have to be considered in order to
avoid that the password can be determined by using any known data known about
the attacked person: The password must not be prone to being associated with
the attacked person in order not to jeopardize the password's effect.
To make things easier for oneself, another solution must be found.
Keys
What cannot be associated with anyone are key pairs. Since these are based on
random numbers, the result is a seemingly haphazard sequence of characters
that can impossibly be guessed, and a sufficiently big key length makes it
virtually impossible to decipher an encrypted message in a feasible amount of
time.
For this, a key must be generated at first. There are multiple programs for
this task. However, the one of interest for us is the program
ssh-keygen that is able to generate multiple types
of cryptographic keys.