Table of Contents

About

A keypair is a pair of keys:

  • a public key: Used for encryption or signature verification;
  • and a private one: The decryption key which is kept secret decrypt and sign.

They are a component of the public key scheme.

For some software such as portcle, a keypair is:

Because the public key is generated from the private key

Management

Format

See File format for key

Creation

Different tool create different format.

keytool

With the Java keytool utility, generation of a keypair and creation of a (Java) key store (Jks) with the rsa implementation algorithm. 

keytool \
    -genkeypair 
    -alias aliasEntry
    -keyalg RSA 
    -keystore keyStoreName.jks 
    -dname "[email protected], CN=KeyName, OU=Programs Partners, O=Organisation, L=Town, C=NL" 
    -storepass keyStorePassword 
    -keysize 2048 
    -keypass keyPassword

where:

keygen

SSH - KeyGen to create a key pair in the pem format

putty

Putty has a tool to create key pair in a ppk format