With this program you will be able to generate OpenSSL and OpenSSH keys (RSA, Ed25519) and carry out transformations between both formats.
Project description
KeySec
With this program you'll be able to:
- Generate OpenSSL and OpenSSH private and public keys (Ed25519, RSA)
- Convert a key pair between both formats (OpenSSL ↔ OpenSSH)
- Add, edit and remove passphrases from private keys.
- Add, edit and remove comments from OpenSSH keys.
- See information about a key.
You need to have openssl
and ssh-keygen
for this program to work.
Table of contents
Installation
Use the package manager pip or pipx to install it:
pip install keysec
Alternatively, you can use one of the two portable versions provided on the releases page.
- The lightest one has been packaged using autopackage and will require you to have Python 3.9+ installed.
- The heavier one has been packaged using PyInstaller and has no external dependencies, so it doesn't matter if you don't have Python installed, or if your version is lower than 3.9.
See Packaging for more information.
How to use it
The program has very few options to keep it simple, so let's see some examples.
Before we begin, let's point out that this program is capable of outputting its results to a file (--out/-o
) or to standard output.
Similarly, it is capable of reading input data from a file (--in/-i
) or from standard input.
This feature gives the program versatility to use linux pipes, as we will see now.
Generate a key pair
Generate an Ed25519 key pair
Let's start creating the private key. For this example we are creating it in OpenSSL format. To make it in OpenSSH format simply replace the corresponding --format
argument:
keysec gen priv --algo ed25519 --format openssl --out private.key
keysec gen pub --in private.key --out public.key
Note: The default algorithm is already Ed25519
, and the default format is OpenSSL, so simply writing keysec gen priv
would be enough for the first line.
As we can see, we must first create the private key and then generate the public one from it.
In a single line, using pipes, this would be:
keysec gen priv | tee private.key | keysec gen pub > public.key
Generate an RSA key pair
Now let's do the same with a 4096-bit RSA key pair (by default the program uses 2048 bits, and these are the only two options available), but this time we will generate them in OpenSSH format
keysec gen priv --algo rsa --bits 4096 --format openssh --out private.key
keysec gen pub -i private.key -o public.key
In a single line, using pipes, this would be:
keysec gen priv -a rsa -b 4096 -f openssh | tee private.key | keysec gen pub -o public.key
Change a key pair format
Either if we have an OpenSSL or an OpenSSH key pair, we can perform transformations between both formats.
If the original key has a passphrase, it will be kept in the new formatted one unless --nopass/-np
is specified.
Let's see three ways to use this command:
keysec conv < keyfile
keysec conv -i keyfile --nopass
cat keyfile | keysec conv -np
The program will automatically detect the original format and perform the transformation to the other one.
Edit a key passphrase
To interactively add, edit or remove a private key passphrase, use the --password/-p
option:
keysec edit -p -i private.key
Edit a key comment
If you want to add, edit, or delete an OpenSSH public or private key comment, you can choose to do so interactively or put it in the arguments, as shown in the next two examples.
For interactive mode, simply use the option --comment/-c
:
keysec edit --comment --in keyfile
To directly write the comment to the key without being prompted for input, just do:
keysec edit -c "root@host" -i keyfile
Use an empty string to remove a comment:
keysec edit -c "" -i keyfile
Show information about a key
Show some information about a private or public key. Again, like the last command, there is more than one way to do this. The simplest one is:
keysec info < keyfile
Help
There are also multiple help options --help/-h
in the program. Don't forget to read them if you forget something:
keysec -h
keysec gen -h
keysec gen priv -h
keysec gen pub -h
keysec conv -h
keysec edit -h
keysec info -h
Packaging
In this section we are going to explain how to replicate the packaging process.
Autopackage Portable
To generate the program lightest portable version, which is available in this GitHub repository, install first autopackage
with pip
:
pip install autopackage
Then run the following commands:
autopackage -s setup.py -p
Autopackage Wheel
To generate the program wheel, available at PyPi, first do the following:
- In the
setup.py
file remove thepackage_data
variable and also remove it from theSetupParser
call - In the
setup.py
file change thezip_safe
flag toTrue
- In the
__main__.py
file remove lines from5
to20
, that import the files inside thelibs
folder.
Then run:
autopackage -s setup.py
PyInstaller
To generate the program heaviest portable version, which is also available in this GitHub repository, install pyinstaller
with pip
:
pip install pyinstaller
Then run:
pyinstaller --onefile keysec.py
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
License
This program is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPLv3+)
Project details
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