- The first time you use your key, you will be prompted to enter your passphrase. If you choose to save the passphrase with your keychain, you won't have to enter it again. Otherwise, you can store your passphrase in the keychain when you add your key to the ssh-agent. For more information, see 'Adding your SSH key to the ssh-agent.'
- The passphrase can also be referred to as a password, network security key, pre-shared key, or just key. This article provides instructions for retrieving your passphrase in the following operating systems: Windows 8; Windows 7; Windows Vista; Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), OS.

Sftp Enter Passphrase For Key
Protecting a Private Key. The purpose of the passphrase is usually to encrypt the private key. This makes the key file by itself useless to an attacker. It is not uncommon for files to leak from backups or decommissioned hardware, and hackers commonly exfiltrate files from compromised systems. To use an encrypted key, the passphrase is also needed.
Tell macOS Sierra to stop Keychaining ssh key passphrase.
The behavior of ssh
, ssh-agent
and ssh-add
, changed in macOS Sierra. There is no GUI pop up asking for ssh key passphrase to store the identity in ssh-agent
. Instead, ssh asks you for the passphrase via command line prompt, then stores the passphrase in the Keychain. The worst part is, there’s no clue to delete that via Keychain Access
. This isn’t quite right. Usually we expect ssh-agent stores our keys only, and the system will forget the identity after reboot. The concept is, the program can only remember the key but not the passphrase.

For people who want the old behavior, simply put these three lines in your ~/.ssh/config:

UseKeychain is a macOS only parameter, default yes. AddKeysToAgent is a new parameter introduced in OpenSSH 7, default no.
How about the passphrase previously stored in the Keychain?

First, using ssh-add
to load your key into the agent again.
Then, using ssh-add -K -d
to delete the key in agent and the passphrase in Keychain. Finally, using ssh-add -K
to make sure nothing will be automatically loaded.
Avoid Enter Passphrase For Key Mac
For those who still feel unhappy, find these files by find
and delete them:
Though there’re some other stuff encrypted in it. Make sure there’s a backup before delete them.
