xref: /NextBSD/crypto/openssh/ssh-keyscan.0 (revision 95f7c2f56c7268d6ed9c2a56d357aeeac260363b)
1SSH-KEYSCAN(1)             OpenBSD Reference Manual             SSH-KEYSCAN(1)
2
3NAME
4     ssh-keyscan - gather ssh public keys
5
6SYNOPSIS
7     ssh-keyscan [-46Hv] [-f file] [-p port] [-T timeout] [-t type]
8                 [host | addrlist namelist] ...
9
10DESCRIPTION
11     ssh-keyscan is a utility for gathering the public ssh host keys of a
12     number of hosts.  It was designed to aid in building and verifying
13     ssh_known_hosts files.  ssh-keyscan provides a minimal interface suitable
14     for use by shell and perl scripts.
15
16     ssh-keyscan uses non-blocking socket I/O to contact as many hosts as
17     possible in parallel, so it is very efficient.  The keys from a domain of
18     1,000 hosts can be collected in tens of seconds, even when some of those
19     hosts are down or do not run ssh.  For scanning, one does not need login
20     access to the machines that are being scanned, nor does the scanning
21     process involve any encryption.
22
23     The options are as follows:
24
25     -4      Forces ssh-keyscan to use IPv4 addresses only.
26
27     -6      Forces ssh-keyscan to use IPv6 addresses only.
28
29     -f file
30             Read hosts or ``addrlist namelist'' pairs from file, one per
31             line.  If - is supplied instead of a filename, ssh-keyscan will
32             read hosts or ``addrlist namelist'' pairs from the standard
33             input.
34
35     -H      Hash all hostnames and addresses in the output.  Hashed names may
36             be used normally by ssh and sshd, but they do not reveal
37             identifying information should the file's contents be disclosed.
38
39     -p port
40             Port to connect to on the remote host.
41
42     -T timeout
43             Set the timeout for connection attempts.  If timeout seconds have
44             elapsed since a connection was initiated to a host or since the
45             last time anything was read from that host, then the connection
46             is closed and the host in question considered unavailable.
47             Default is 5 seconds.
48
49     -t type
50             Specifies the type of the key to fetch from the scanned hosts.
51             The possible values are ``rsa1'' for protocol version 1 and
52             ``dsa'', ``ecdsa'', ``ed25519'', or ``rsa'' for protocol version
53             2.  Multiple values may be specified by separating them with
54             commas.  The default is to fetch ``rsa'' and ``ecdsa'' keys.
55
56     -v      Verbose mode.  Causes ssh-keyscan to print debugging messages
57             about its progress.
58
59SECURITY
60     If an ssh_known_hosts file is constructed using ssh-keyscan without
61     verifying the keys, users will be vulnerable to man in the middle
62     attacks.  On the other hand, if the security model allows such a risk,
63     ssh-keyscan can help in the detection of tampered keyfiles or man in the
64     middle attacks which have begun after the ssh_known_hosts file was
65     created.
66
67FILES
68     Input format:
69
70     1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4 name.my.domain,name,n.my.domain,n,1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4
71
72     Output format for rsa1 keys:
73
74     host-or-namelist bits exponent modulus
75
76     Output format for rsa, dsa and ecdsa keys:
77
78     host-or-namelist keytype base64-encoded-key
79
80     Where keytype is either ``ecdsa-sha2-nistp256'', ``ecdsa-sha2-nistp384'',
81     ``ecdsa-sha2-nistp521'', ``ssh-ed25519'', ``ssh-dss'' or ``ssh-rsa''.
82
83     /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
84
85EXAMPLES
86     Print the rsa host key for machine hostname:
87
88     $ ssh-keyscan hostname
89
90     Find all hosts from the file ssh_hosts which have new or different keys
91     from those in the sorted file ssh_known_hosts:
92
93     $ ssh-keyscan -t rsa,dsa,ecdsa -f ssh_hosts | \
94             sort -u - ssh_known_hosts | diff ssh_known_hosts -
95
96SEE ALSO
97     ssh(1), sshd(8)
98
99AUTHORS
100     David Mazieres <dm@lcs.mit.edu> wrote the initial version, and Wayne
101     Davison <wayned@users.sourceforge.net> added support for protocol version
102     2.
103
104BUGS
105     It generates "Connection closed by remote host" messages on the consoles
106     of all the machines it scans if the server is older than version 2.9.
107     This is because it opens a connection to the ssh port, reads the public
108     key, and drops the connection as soon as it gets the key.
109
110OpenBSD 5.5                    January 28, 2014                    OpenBSD 5.5
111