NAME

     ssh-keyscan — gather SSH public keys from servers

SYNOPSIS

     ssh-keyscan [-46cDHv] [-f file] [-p port] [-T timeout] [-t type] [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, the format of which is
     documented in sshd(8).  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 sshd(8).  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:

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

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

     -c      Request certificates from target hosts instead of plain keys.

     -D      Print keys found as SSHFP DNS records.  The default is to print keys in a format
             usable as a ssh(1) known_hosts file.

     -f file
             Read hosts or “addrlist namelist” pairs from file, one per line.  If ‘-’ is supplied
             instead of a filename, ssh-keyscan will read from the standard input.  Input is
             expected in the 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

     -H      Hash all hostnames and addresses in the output.  Hashed names may be used normally
             by ssh(1) and sshd(8), but they do not reveal identifying information should the
             file's contents be disclosed.

     -p port
             Connect to port 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, the connection is closed and the host in question considered unavailable.
             The default is 5 seconds.

     -t type
             Specify the type of the key to fetch from the scanned hosts.  The possible values
             are “dsa”, “ecdsa”, “ed25519”, or “rsa”.  Multiple values may be specified by
             separating them with commas.  The default is to fetch “rsa”, “ecdsa”, and “ed25519”
             keys.

     -v      Verbose mode: print debugging messages about progress.

     If an ssh_known_hosts file is constructed using ssh-keyscan without verifying the keys,
     users will be vulnerable to man in the middle 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.

FILES

     /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

EXAMPLES

     Print the RSA host key for machine hostname:

           $ ssh-keyscan -t rsa 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,ecdsa,ed25519 -f ssh_hosts | \
                   sort -u - ssh_known_hosts | diff ssh_known_hosts -

SEE ALSO

     ssh(1), sshd(8)

     Using DNS to Securely Publish Secure Shell (SSH) Key Fingerprints, RFC 4255, 2006.

AUTHORS

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