What's the difference between id_rsa.pub and id_dsa.pub?

encryption ssh rsa public-key-encryption dsa
Andrew picture Andrew · May 12, 2010 · Viewed 71.6k times · Source

Is one more secure than the other?

Answer

Mike Pelley picture Mike Pelley · May 12, 2010

id_rsa.pub and id_dsa.pub are the public keys for id_rsa and id_dsa.

If you are asking in relation to SSH, id_rsa is an RSA key and can be used with the SSH protocol 1 or 2, whereas id_dsa is a DSA key and can only be used with SSH protocol 2. Both are very secure, but DSA does seem to be the standard these days (assuming all your clients/servers support SSH 2).

Update: Since this was written DSA has been shown to be insecure. More information available in the answer below.

Related questions

JSchException: Algorithm negotiation fail

I am trying to connect to remote sftp server over ssh with JSch (0.1.44-1) but during "session.connect();" I am getting this exception: com.jcraft.jsch.JSchException: Algorithm negotiation fail at com.jcraft.jsch.Session.receive_kexinit(Session.java:529) at …

Read More
what is the difference between various keys in public key encryption

I am confused between various keys used in encryption. Amazon gave me key.pem In linux i generate keys like id_rsa and id_rsa.pub Now putty used key like key.ppk I am really confused what type of …

Read More
Encrypt and decrypt a string in C#?

How can I encrypt and decrypt a string in C#?

Read More