Windows CHMOD 600

Question

I\'m trying to connect to Amazon EC2 using OpenSSH in windows but I need to set the permissions of my key file.

What is the windows equivalent of CHMOD 600

Answer 1

Right-click on the file/dir, select Properties then Security. Click Advanced, then Edit. Uncheck "Inheritable" and choose "Remove" in the dialog. Remove any explicit permissions left, add a "Full Access" permission to your username.

Answer 2

I've go same issue. The solution, which worked was to set compatibility mode of ssh.exe to Windows XP SP3.

-> This answer works for windows 7

Answer 3

I prefer Cygwin over putty and you can just run chmod command in cygwin to change the permission of PEM key to be 400, then you are good to go.

myuser@myuser-HP ~
$ ssh -i /cygdrive/c/Users/myuser/Downloads/mykey.pem ec2-user@xx.xx.xx.xx
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@         WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0550 for '/cygdrive/c/Users/myuser/Downloads/mykey.pem' are too open.
It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
Load key "/cygdrive/c/Users/myuser/Downloads/mykey.pem": bad permissions
Permission denied (publickey).

myuser@myuser-HP ~
$ chmod
chmod: missing operand
Try 'chmod --help' for more information.

myuser@myuser-HP ~
$ chmod 400 /cygdrive/c/Users/myuser/Downloads/mykey.pem

myuser@myuser-HP ~
$ ssh -i /cygdrive/c/Users/myuser/Downloads/meykey.pem ec2-user@xx.xx.xx.xx

       __|  __|_  )
       _|  (     /   Amazon Linux AMI
      ___|\___|___|

https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2015.09-release-notes/
[ec2-user@ip-xxx ~]$ ohyeah I am in!

Answer 4

chmod won't work in windows. Try the following method to restrict the access

• Right click on the file > properties > security > advanced > disable inheritance > 'Convert inherited permissions into explicit permission on this object'
• Click on "allow | everyone | Full Control" > edit > 'select a principal' > type your username > 'check names' > select your username > ok > ok > ok (ok until all windows are closed)

Answer 5

Copy the file to Unix system throug scp and make chmod 600 to file. Then transfer file back to Windows machine. It worked for me.

Answer 6

For unix & OSX

Quite simply:

chown -R $USER:users ~/.ssh/
chmod -R 600 ~/.ssh/

For Windows

If the file is a windows (NTFS) symbolic link, the above won't work. You need to make it a regular file. I am not sure why.

If you don't have openssh or cygwin, use chocolatey to install it easily using chocolatey.

choco install cyg-get

Open Cygwin Terminal that was installed with chocolatey and run (note that ssh-keygen creates new keys):

cyg-get install openssh
ssh-keygen
cd ~/.ssh && explorer.exe .

Verify keys are there (or replace them with the keys you want), and then in Cygwin shell:

chown -R $USER:users ~/.ssh/
chmod -R 600 ~/.ssh/

Or for the rare case that you're using (and generated the keys from) chocolatey's SSH package:

chown -R $USER:users  /cygdrive/c/Users/$USER/.ssh
chmod -R 600 /cygdrive/c/Users/$USER/.ssh