How do I connect to an Amazon EC2 instance?
Amazon EC2 stores the public key on your instance, and you store the private key. For Windows instances, the private key is required to decrypt the administrator password. You then use the decrypted password to connect to your instance.
How to access an Amazon RDS instance remotely using AWS client VPN?
Accessing an Amazon RDS instance remotely using AWS Client VPN | AWS Database Blog Developers and database administrators, often login remotely to an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance on a public subnet and access the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) instance.
What is an AWS access key?
Access keys are long-term credentials for an IAM user or the AWS account root user. You can use access keys to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI or AWS API (directly or using the AWS SDK).
How to create a new key pair in Amazon EC2?
1 Create a new key pair using the Amazon EC2 console or a third-party tool . 2 Retrieve the public key from your new key pair. ... 3 Connect to your instance using your existing private key file. 4 Using a text editor of your choice, open the .ssh/authorized_keys file on the instance. ... More items...
How do I access my EC2 instance remotely?
Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/ .In the navigation pane, select Instances. ... On the Connect to instance page, choose the RDP client tab, and then choose Get password.Choose Browse and navigate to the private key ( . ... Choose Decrypt Password. ... Choose Download remote desktop file.More items...
How do I get my AWS SSH key?
Use the steps below.In your AWS Management Console, choose an AWS Region in which you plan to reserve contacts. ... Choose Services > EC2 > Network & Security > Key Pairs, and then choose Create Key Pair.Enter a friendly name like groundstation-ec2-access-key-
How do I find my EC2 instance public key?
Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/ .In the navigation pane, choose Instances, and then select your instance.On the Details tab, under Instance details, the Key pair name field displays the name of the public key that you specified when you launched the instance.
How do I access my EC2 instance if I lost the key pair?
If you've lost the key pair, you can create an AMI of the existing instance, and then launch a new instance. You can then select a new key pair by following the instance launch wizard.
What is my AWS Access Key ID?
1 Go to Amazon Web Services console and click on the name of your account (it is located in the top right corner of the console). Then, in the expanded drop-down list, select Security Credentials. 2 Click the Continue to Security Credentials button. 3 Expand the Access Keys (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) option.
What is AWS SSH key?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses SSH keys to securely connect and exchange information between servers and clients. Using SSH keys greatly increases the security of your sites and applications. This article shows you how to generate and use SSH keys to connect to your AWS account managed by Media Temple.
What happens if I lose my SSH key EC2?
If your instance is a managed instance in AWS Systems Manager, then use the AWSSupport-ResetAccess document to recover your lost key pair. AWSSupportResetAccess automatically generates and adds a new SSH (public/private) key pair using the EC2 Rescue for Linux tool on the specified EC2 instance.
How do I create an SSH key?
Open a terminal and use the ssh-keygen command with the -C flag to create a new SSH key pair. Replace the following: KEY_FILENAME : the name for your SSH key file. For example, a filename of my-ssh-key generates a private key file named my-ssh-key and a public key file named my-ssh-key.
How do I download AWS public key?
Downloading a public key (console)To change the AWS Region, use the Region selector in the upper-right corner of the page.In the navigation pane, choose Customer managed keys.Choose the alias or key ID of an asymmetric KMS key.Choose the Cryptographic configuration tab. ... Choose the Public key tab.More items...
Can you recover lost private key?
If you have a Private key but not sure it matches the certificate you received from the Certificate Authority, just go here to check. In case the RSA Key was deleted from the server and there is no way to restore it, the Reissue is the only way out. You will need to have a new pair of CSR code/RSA Key generated.
Can I change key pair for EC2 instance?
Once an instance has been started, there is no way to change the keypair associated with the instance at a meta data level, but you can change what ssh key you use to connect to the instance.
How do I find my SSH public key?
Checking for existing SSH keysOpen TerminalTerminalGit Bash.Enter ls -al ~/. ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present. ... Check the directory listing to see if you already have a public SSH key. ... Either generate a new SSH key or upload an existing key.
How do I find my SSH key in Windows?
Generating an SSH keyOpen the PuTTYgen program.For Type of key to generate, select SSH-2 RSA.Click the Generate button.Move your mouse in the area below the progress bar. ... Type a passphrase in the Key passphrase field. ... Click the Save private key button to save the private key.More items...•
How do I create an SSH key?
Open a terminal and use the ssh-keygen command with the -C flag to create a new SSH key pair. Replace the following: KEY_FILENAME : the name for your SSH key file. For example, a filename of my-ssh-key generates a private key file named my-ssh-key and a public key file named my-ssh-key.
Connect to your Windows instance using RDP
To connect to a Windows instance, you must retrieve the initial administrator password and then enter this password when you connect to your instance using Remote Desktop. It takes a few minutes after instance launch before this password is available.
Connect to your Windows instance using RDP with Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Fleet Manager
You can use Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Fleet Manager, a capability of AWS Systems Manager, to connect to your Windows instances using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). These Remote Desktop sessions powered by NICE DCV provide secure connections to your instances directly from your browser.
Connect to a Windows instance using its IPv6 address
If you've enabled your VPC for IPv6 and assigned an IPv6 address to your Windows instance, you can use an RDP client to connect to your instance using its IPv6 address (for example, 2001:db8:1234:1a00:9691:9503:25ad:1761) instead of using its public IPv4 address or public DNS hostname.
Connect to a Windows instance using Session Manager
Session Manager is a fully-managed AWS Systems Manager capability for managing your Amazon EC2 instances through an interactive, one-click, browser-based shell, or through the AWS CLI. You can use Session Manager to start a session with an instance in your account.
Configure your accounts
Change the administrator password from the default value. You can change the password while you are logged on to the instance itself, just as you would on any computer running Windows Server.
Transfer files to Windows instances
You can work with your Windows instance in the same way that you would work with any Windows server. For example, you can transfer files between a Windows instance and your local computer using the local file sharing feature of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection software.
Permissions required
To create access keys for your own IAM user, you must have the permissions from the following policy:
Managing access keys (console)
You can use the AWS Management Console to manage an IAM user's access keys.
Managing access keys (AWS CLI)
To manage an IAM user's access keys from the AWS CLI, run the following commands.
Managing access keys (AWS API)
To manage an IAM user's access keys from the AWS API, call the following operations.
Rotating access keys
As a security best practice, we recommend that you regularly rotate (change) IAM user access keys. If your administrator granted you the necessary permissions, you can rotate your own access keys.
Auditing access keys
You can review the AWS access keys in your code to determine whether the keys are from an account that you own. You can pass an access key ID using the aws sts get-access-key-info AWS CLI command or the GetAccessKeyInfo AWS API operation.
Create a key pair using a third-party tool and import the public key to Amazon EC2
Instead of using Amazon EC2 to create your key pair, you can create an RSA or ED25519 key pair by using a third-party tool, and then import the public key to Amazon EC2.
Tag a public key
To help categorize and manage the public keys that you've either created using Amazon EC2 or imported to Amazon EC2, you can tag them with custom metadata. For more information about how tags work, see Tag your Amazon EC2 resources .
Retrieve the public key from the private key
On your local Windows computer, you can use PuTTYgen to get the public key for your key pair.
Retrieve the public key through instance metadata
The public key that you specified when you launched an instance is also available through the instance metadata. To view the public key that you specified when launching the instance, use the following command from your instance.
Identify the key pair that was specified at launch
When you launch an instance, you are prompted for a key pair. If you plan to connect to the instance using RDP, you must specify a key pair.
Verify your key pair's fingerprint
On the Key Pairs page in the Amazon EC2 console, the Fingerprint column displays the fingerprints generated from your key pairs. AWS calculates the fingerprint differently depending on whether the key pair was generated by AWS or a third-party tool.
Delete your key pair
When you delete a key pair using the following methods, you are only deleting the public key that you saved in Amazon EC2 when you created or imported the key pair. Deleting a key pair doesn't delete the public key from any instances that were previously launched using that key pair.
Create a key pair using a third-party tool and import the public key to Amazon EC2
Instead of using Amazon EC2 to create your key pair, you can create an RSA key pair using a third-party tool and then import the public key to Amazon EC2.
Tag a public key
To help categorize and manage the public keys that you've either created using Amazon EC2 or imported to Amazon EC2, you can tag them with custom metadata. For more information about how tags work, see Tag your Amazon EC2 resources .
Retrieve the public key from the private key
On your local Linux or macOS computer, you can use the ssh-keygen command to retrieve the public key for your key pair. Specify the path where you downloaded your private key (the .pem file).
Retrieve the public key through instance metadata
The public key that you specified when you launched an instance is also available through the instance metadata. To view the public key that you specified when launching the instance, use the following command from your instance:
Locate the public key on an instance
When you launch an instance, you are prompted for a key pair. If you plan to connect to the instance using SSH, you must specify a key pair. When your instance boots for the first time, the content of the public key that you specified at launch is placed on your Linux instance in an entry within ~/.ssh/authorized_keys .
Identify the key pair that was specified at launch
When you launch an instance, you are prompted for a key pair. If you plan to connect to the instance using SSH, you must specify a key pair.
Verify your key pair's fingerprint
On the Key Pairs page in the Amazon EC2 console, the Fingerprint column displays the fingerprints generated from your key pairs. AWS calculates the fingerprint differently depending on whether the key pair was generated by AWS or a third-party tool.
Providing a Security Group that Allows RDP Access
Before you can use RDP to log into a Windows instance, the instance's security group inbound rules must allow RDP connections. When you create the first stack in a region, AWS OpsWorks Stacks creates a set of security groups.
Logging in As an Ordinary User
An authorized user can log in to instances using a temporary password, provided by AWS OpsWorks Stacks.
Logging in As Administrator
You can log in to an instance as Administrator by using the appropriate password. If you have assigned an EC2 key pair to an instance, Amazon EC2 uses it to automatically create and encrypt an Administrator password when the instance starts.
Our security policy on secret access keys
Secret access keys are—as the name implies—secrets, like your password. For your own security, AWS doesn’t reveal your password to you if you forgot it (you’d have to set a new password). Similarly, AWS does not allow retrieval of a secret access key after its initial creation.
A security suggestion
Remember IAM Best Practice s : you should lock away your AWS root account credentials and use IAM users instead. You can create an IAM user that can do nearly anything that a root account can. The benefit of IAM is that you can control the permissions of an IAM user, or delete the user altogether, at any time.
