Generate Public Key For Assembly

-->

To sign an assembly with a strong name, you must have a public/private key pair. This public and private cryptographic key pair is used during compilation to create a strong-named assembly. You can create a key pair using the Strong Name tool (Sn.exe). Key pair files usually have an .snk extension.

Note

Rationale: The public key or public key token stored in an assembly reference is used to ensure that the assembly being referenced and the assembly actually used at runtime were produced by an entity in possession of the same private key, and can therefore be assumed to have been intended for the same purpose. Mar 27, 2019  The private key is able to generate signatures. A signature created using your private key cannot be forged by anybody who does not have that key; but anybody who has your public key can verify that a particular signature is genuine. So you generate a key pair on your own computer, and you copy the public key to the server under a certain name.

2) To get the public key token of any of your project, you can add sn.exe as part of your External Tools in Visual Studio. The steps are shown in this Microsoft link: How to: Create a Tool to Get the Public Key of an Assembly. Jun 22, 2012  achieves this security by public key encryption. The public key and private keys are complementary entities; one is meaningless without the other. The creation of public and private keys is carried out by complicated mathematical algorithms. A document encrypted with one key can be decrypted only by using the other key. To sign an assembly with a strong name, you must have a public/private key pair. This public and private cryptographic key pair is used during compilation to create a strong-named assembly. You can create a key pair using the Strong Name tool (Sn.exe). Key pair files usually have an.snk extension. Jun 15, 2014  In another post, we discussed why you should strongly name assemblies and how to do it via the Strong Name Tool (sn.exe). In this quick post we will consider another scenario - how to get the public key token string value of a strongly named assembly (dll). This is easily accomplished by using the Strong Name Tool as well. Jun 15, 2014 How to Find the Public Key Token for a Strongly-Named Assembly Posted on June 15, 2014 Updated on July 2, 2014 In another post, we discussed why you should strongly name assemblies and how to do it via the Strong Name Tool (sn.exe).

In Visual Studio, the C# and Visual Basic project property pages include a Signing tab that enables you to select existing key files or to generate new key files without using Sn.exe. In Visual C++, you can specify the location of an existing key file in the Advanced property page in the Linker section of the Configuration Properties section of the Property Pages window. The use of the AssemblyKeyFileAttribute attribute to identify key file pairs was made obsolete beginning with Visual Studio 2005.

Create a key pair

To create a key pair, at a command prompt, type the following command:

sn –k <file name>

In this command, file name is the name of the output file containing the key pair.

The following example creates a key pair called sgKey.snk.

If you intend to delay sign an assembly and you control the whole key pair (which is unlikely outside test scenarios), you can use the following commands to generate a key pair and then extract the public key from it into a separate file. First, create the key pair:

Next, extract the public key from the key pair and copy it to a separate file:

Once you create the key pair, you must put the file where the strong name signing tools can find it.

When signing an assembly with a strong name, the Assembly Linker (Al.exe) looks for the key file relative to the current directory and to the output directory. Adobe flash cs6 serial key generator. When using command-line compilers, you can simply copy the key to the current directory containing your code modules.

If you are using an earlier version of Visual Studio that does not have a Signing tab in the project properties, the recommended key file location is the project directory with the file attribute specified as follows:

See also

This guide contains description of setting up public key authentication for use with WinSCP. You may want to learn more about public key authentication or SSH keys instead.

Public Key Example

  • Configure Server to Accept Public Key

Advertisement

Before starting you should:

  • Have WinSCP installed;
  • Know how to connect to the server without public key authentication.

If you do not have a key pair yet, start with generating new key pair.

Connect to your SSH server using WinSCP with the SSH protocol, using other means of authentication than public key, e.g. typically using password authentication.

Once logged in, configure your server to accept your public key. That varies with SSH server software being used. The most common SSH server is OpenSSH.

You can use Session > Install Public Key into Server command on the main window, or Tools > Install Public Key into Server command on SSH > Authentication page page on Advanced Site Settings dialog. The functionality of the command is similar to that of OpenSSH ssh-copy-id command.

Or you can configure the key manually:

  • Navigate into a .ssh subdirectory of your account home directory. You may need to enable showing hidden files to see the directory. If the directory does not exists, you need to create it first.
  • Once there, open a file authorized_keys for editing. Again you may have to create this file, if this is your first key.
  • Switch to the PuTTYgen window, select all of the text in the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file box, and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Then, switch back to the editor and insert the data into the open file, making sure it ends up all on one line. Save the file. WinSCP can show you the public key too.
  • Ensure that your account home directory, your .ssh directory and file authorized_keys are not group-writable or world-writable. Recommended permissions for .ssh directory are 700. Recommended permissions for authorized_keys files are 600. Read more about changing permissions.
  • Save a public key file from PuTTYgen, and copy that into the .ssh2 subdirectory of your account home directory.
  • In the same subdirectory, edit (or create) a file called authorization. In this file you should put a line like Key mykey.pub, with mykey.pub replaced by the name of your key file.

For other SSH server software, you should refer to the manual for that server.

When configuring session, specify path to your private key on SSH > Authentication page of Advanced Site Settings dialog.

Generate Public Key For Assembly Free

Alternatively, load the private key into Pageant.

Cloud providers have typically their own mechanism to setup a public key authentication to virtual servers running in the cloud.

For details see guides for connecting to:

  • Amazon EC2;
  • Google Compute Engine;
  • Microsoft Azure.
  • Using Public Keys for Authentication;
  • Using PuTTYgen;
  • Understanding SSH Key Pairs.