Does Rebex Support Authenticating SSH Connection with Private Key and Public Certificate?

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to authenticate an SSH connection using a private key and a public certificate, both in OpenSSH format, in Rebex. In a typical bash environment, I would use the following command to connect:

ssh root@192.168.0.2 -i ed25519 -i ed25519_cert.pub

This command allows me to use both the private key (ed25519) and the public certificate (ed25519_cert.pub) for authentication.

Is there a way to replicate this kind of authentication in Rebex? Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Rebex SSH servers support authentication using X.509 certificates, as specified by RFC 6187. However, it looks like what you are attempting is authentication using a so-called "OpenSSH certificate".

Unfortunately, OpenSSH certificates are incompatible with X.509 set of standards (they are a proprietary SSH extension) and are not currently supported by Rebex products.

Sadly, OpenSSH does not support X.509 certificates. Instead of implementing RFC 6187, OpenSSH developers choose by introduce their own kinds of certificates and infrastructure.