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Smartcard Authentication - Secure & Easy

Secure Shell with Smart Card Authentication

PuTTY, the free SSH implementation from Simon Tatham, does support public key authentication but lacks support for smart cards. An enhancement request for PuTTY asking for smart card support within the original PuTTY package has been on the PuTTY wishlist for a very long time.

PuTTY.exe may read a private key from a file or may talk to an SSH authentication agent, which will do all cryptographic operation on behalf of the actual putty.exe. The PuTTY-Package contains such an agent, i.e. pageant.exe, but this agent can also read private keys from password protected files only.

In the download area of this website you will find a replacement for pagent.exe that does support smart cards.

This smart card enabled pageant.exe has the following additional features:

• As a security product PuTTY tries to avoid dependencies on external libraries. So does the smart card enabled version of pageant.exe. It either talks directly to your card without the need of any kind of middleware or uses a PKCS#11-library.
• Secure PIN Entry is supported for smart card readers with pinpad.
• Public keys from your smart card will be inserted/removed automatically into pageants keylist on smart card insertion/removal.
• If your smart card contains multiple private RSA- and ECC-keys all of them will be inserted into pageants keylist and may be used simultaneously.
• If you have mutiple cardreaders attached to your PC all of them will be scanned for smart cards and may be used simultaneously.
• As on option pageant may store the PIN of your smart card in memory until you shutdown the agent.
• Support for any Smartcard/Token for which a PKCS#11-library is available (so far only RSA-keys are supported).
• Native support for the following Smartcards. Here "native" means that the card can be used without the need for any kind of middlware or card-specific driver.
  • PKCard Version 1 (RSA-keys up to 4096bits) and Version 2 (RSA- and ECC-keys).
  • All TCOS based smartcards, in particular all TCOS based german signature cards (SignTrust 1024, NetKey E4, Datev).
  • CardOS cards, in particular most cards of the german Trust-Center D-Trust.
  • german electronic Health Professional Card.
  • german electronic public health insurance membership card.
  • Aladdin eToken PRO (32K and 64K).
  • Sicrypt smartcard.
  • OpenPGP smartcard, version 1 and 2.
  • OpenPGP emulation in CryptoStick and Yubikeys.
  • PIV emulation in Yubikeys (ECC works, RSA with recent versions only).
  • Aloaha smartcard.
  
  
• Support of keys up to 4096bit.
• Creates key-descriptions for all of your smart cards public keys which may be inserted into your authorized_keys file via Cut&Paste. Just insert your smart card into your reader with your control-key pressed.
• Supports all applications that implement the SSH authentication agent protocol. In particular pageant.exe will work with WinSCP and the Filezilla-Client.

If your smart card does not work then the reason is most likely that you are the first one to try this particular card. Just let me know at support@smartcard-auth.de and I will do my best to support your card as well.

There's a Smartcard Client Programm in the download area that allows me to open your smartcard via an internet connection. That's the most comfortable way to debug problems and add support for a new card. Of course you should change your card PINs to 123456 and should know what you are doing. If you dont trust me, dont let me do whatever I want with your smartcard.

Installation

Installation is easy:

• Install PuTTY 32bit with putty-0.??-installer.msi from the PuTTY download page.
• PuTTY will install itself into one directory (normally C:\Program Files\PuTTY). There you will find pageant.exe, the SSH authentication agent. Replace this executable with pageant.exe from the download area.
• If you want to use a PKCS#11-library make a copy and store it under the name pageant11.dll either in the directory where pageant.exe is located or in the system32-directory.
• Using PuTTY and/or the SSH authentication agent is described in the PuTTY-documentation. Besides the possibility to use smartcards there is only one difference. If you insert your smartcard with your control-key pressed pageant.exe will write information about all your public keys into a textfile.

Registering your Public Key

Noncommercial use of pageant.exe and use for evaluation purposes is free and you must register your Public Key only if you want to use it commercially.

In order to support free projects users of OpenPGP cards or the OpenPGP CryptoStick may use pageant.exe for free no matter whether usage is commercial or not.

If you need a free licence - either because your usage is noncommercial or you are using an OpenPGP card/stick - just contact me by mail and I will sent you a licence key. If you cannot wait, you may order a licence for EUR 1 and a licence restricted to OpenPGP cards/sticks will be mailed to you immediately.

There is a order-page available, where you can register your key for commercial usage. After having payed your licence fee with PayPal you will be immediately mailed a license file.

If you want to register a couple of keys you may buy a prepaid-code which will allow you to do so without using PayPal for every single licence. Or you may contact me and I will prepare a site-licence.