Abstract

There are two different things needed to setup the certificate authentification.

user certificates: There are N user certifiactes, one for each public key provided for signing.

helloworld-1234567890-1-cert.pub
helloworld-1234567890-2-cert.pub
...
helloworld-1234567890-N-cert.pub

host certificate public key: There is one public key to authenticate servers.
```
yubikeyX.pub
```

Configuration paths

There are two different options to tell the ssh daemon about the certificate: 'user based' (recommended) or 'global'

'user based': The certificate is valid for one specific user on the client.
'global': The certificate is valid for each user on the client.

user based

SSH_CERTIFICATES=$HOME/.ssh/netdef
SSH_CONFIG=$HOME/.ssh/config
SSH_KNOWNHOSTS=$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts

global

SSH_CERTIFICATES=/etc/ssh/netdef
SSH_CONFIG=/etc/ssh/ssh_config
SSH_KNOWNHOSTS=/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

Step 1 - copy all certificates to netdef folder

Copy all certificates that can be found in the provided tar file to the folder '$SSH_CERTIFICATES'.

mkdir -p $SSH_CERTIFICATES
cp *cert.pub $SSH_CERTIFICATES

Step 2 - edit the config file

Add the following lines to '$SSH_CONFIG'. The name of the certificate as well as '$SSH_CERTIFICATES' must be replaced with the correct file name and the correct path to the folder respectively.

Host *.netdef.org
	CertificateFile `$SSH_CERTIFICATES`/helloworld-1234567890-1-cert.pub
	CertificateFile `$SSH_CERTIFICATES`/helloworld-1234567890-2-cert.pub 
	... 
	CertificateFile `$SSH_CERTIFICATES`/helloworld-1234567890-N-cert.pub

Step 3 - edit known hosts file.

Add the following line to '$SSH_KNOWNHOSTS' where 'yubikeyX.pub' must be replaced with the public key stored in 'yubikeyX.pub'.

@cert-authority *.netdef.org `yubikeyX.pub`

Page tree

Client Setup