While a password can eventually be cracked with a brute-force attack, SSH keys are nearly impossible to decipher by brute force alone.' Plus, it means you never have to type C!$c0 again!Ĭisco IOS now has support for using SSH with RSA keys. Digital Ocean, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) provider, has this advice on how you should log into their Droplets: 'you should use public key authentication instead of passwords, if at all possible. This is because SSH keys provide a more secure way of logging in compared to using a password alone. Using an RSA Public/Private key pair instead of a password to authenticate an SSH session is popular on Linux/Unix boxes.