1. Introduction

Questa pagina riassume la sezione corrispondente di RFC 9987 e conserva numeri, nomi dei messaggi e requisiti di sicurezza del protocollo agent SSH.

Secure Shell (SSH) [RFC4251] provides secure remote connections and login over untrusted networks. It supports public key authentication and other authentication mechanisms.

This document specifies a protocol for interacting with a key management component, usually called an agent, that holds private keys. SSH clients, and possibly SSH servers, can invoke the agent to perform operations using public and private keys held by the agent.

Keeping keys in an agent avoids repeatedly loading and unwrapping private keys, supports optional forwarding across an SSH connection, and can reduce attack surface by isolating key handling in a smaller component.