phpman > man > SSH-KEYSCAN(1)

SSH-KEYSCAN(1)            BSD General Commands Manual           SSH-KEYSCAN(1)

NAME
     ssh-keyscan — gather SSH public keys from servers

SYNOPSIS
     ssh-keyscan [-46cDHv] [-f file] [-p port] [-T timeout] [-t type] [host | addrlist namelist]

DESCRIPTION
     ssh-keyscan is a utility for gathering the public SSH host keys of a number of hosts.  It was
     designed to aid in building and verifying ssh_known_hosts files, the format of which is docu‐
     mented in sshd(8).  ssh-keyscan provides a minimal interface suitable for use by shell and perl
     scripts.

     ssh-keyscan uses non-blocking socket I/O to contact as many hosts as possible in parallel, so
     it is very efficient.  The keys from a domain of 1,000 hosts can be collected in tens of sec‐
     onds, even when some of those hosts are down or do not run sshd(8).  For scanning, one does not
     need login access to the machines that are being scanned, nor does the scanning process involve
     any encryption.

     The options are as follows:

     -4      Force ssh-keyscan to use IPv4 addresses only.

     -6      Force ssh-keyscan to use IPv6 addresses only.

     -c      Request certificates from target hosts instead of plain keys.

     -D      Print keys found as SSHFP DNS records.  The default is to print keys in a format usable
             as a ssh(1) known_hosts file.

     -f file
             Read hosts or “addrlist namelist” pairs from file, one per line.  If ‘-’ is supplied
             instead of a filename, ssh-keyscan will read from the standard input.  Input is ex‐
             pected in the format:

             1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4 name.my.domain,name,n.my.domain,n,1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4

     -H      Hash all hostnames and addresses in the output.  Hashed names may be used normally by
             ssh(1) and sshd(8), but they do not reveal identifying information should the file's
             contents be disclosed.

     -p port
             Connect to port on the remote host.

     -T timeout
             Set the timeout for connection attempts.  If timeout seconds have elapsed since a con‐
             nection was initiated to a host or since the last time anything was read from that
             host, the connection is closed and the host in question considered unavailable.  The
             default is 5 seconds.

     -t type
             Specify the type of the key to fetch from the scanned hosts.  The possible values are
             “dsa”, “ecdsa”, “ed25519”, or “rsa”.  Multiple values may be specified by separating
             them with commas.  The default is to fetch “rsa”, “ecdsa”, and “ed25519” keys.

     -v      Verbose mode: print debugging messages about progress.

     If an ssh_known_hosts file is constructed using ssh-keyscan without verifying the keys, users
     will be vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.  On the other hand, if the security model al‐
     lows such a risk, ssh-keyscan can help in the detection of tampered keyfiles or man in the mid‐
     dle attacks which have begun after the ssh_known_hosts file was created.

FILES
     /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

EXAMPLES
     Print the RSA host key for machine hostname:

           $ ssh-keyscan -t rsa hostname

     Find all hosts from the file ssh_hosts which have new or different keys from those in the
     sorted file ssh_known_hosts:

           $ ssh-keyscan -t rsa,dsa,ecdsa,ed25519 -f ssh_hosts | \
                   sort -u - ssh_known_hosts | diff ssh_known_hosts -

SEE ALSO
     ssh(1), sshd(8)

     Using DNS to Securely Publish Secure Shell (SSH) Key Fingerprints, RFC 4255, 2006.

AUTHORS
     David Mazieres <dm AT lcs.edu> wrote the initial version, and Wayne Davison
     <wayned AT users.net> added support for protocol version 2.

BSD                            November 30, 2019                           BSD