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

NAME

     ssh-keyscan -- gather ssh public keys

SYNOPSIS

     ssh-keyscan [-v46] [-p port] [-T timeout] [-t type] [-f file] [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.  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 seconds, even when some of those hosts are down or do not run ssh.  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:

     -p port
	     Port to connect to on the remote host.

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

     -t type
	     Specifies the type of the key to fetch from the scanned hosts.  The possible values are ``rsa1'' for protocol version 1 and ``rsa''
	     or ``dsa'' for protocol version 2.  Multiple values may be specified by separating them with commas.  The default is ``rsa1''.

     -f filename
	     Read hosts or addrlist namelist pairs from this file, one per line.  If - is supplied instead of a filename, ssh-keyscan will read
	     hosts or addrlist namelist pairs from the standard input.

     -v      Verbose mode.  Causes ssh-keyscan to print debugging messages about its progress.

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

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

SECURITY

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

EXAMPLES

     Print the rsa1 host key for machine hostname:

     $ ssh-keyscan 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 -f ssh_hosts | 
	     sort -u - ssh_known_hosts | diff ssh_known_hosts -

FILES

     Input 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

     Output format for rsa1 keys:

     host-or-namelist bits exponent modulus

     Output format for rsa and dsa keys:

     host-or-namelist keytype base64-encoded-key

     Where keytype is either ``ssh-rsa'' or ``ssh-dsa''.

     /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

BUGS

     It generates "Connection closed by remote host" messages on the consoles of all the machines it scans if the server is older than version
     2.9.  This is because it opens a connection to the ssh port, reads the public key, and drops the connection as soon as it gets the key.

SEE ALSO

     ssh(1), sshd(8)

AUTHORS

     David Mazieres <dm@lcs.mit.edu> wrote the initial version, and Wayne Davison <wayned@users.sourceforge.net> added support for protocol ver-
     sion 2.

BSD
								  January 1, 1996							       BSD