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What is randomart produced by ssh-keygen?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026159566 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

When you generate a key, you get "randomart" from newer versions of OpenSSH. I am unable to find an explanation of why, and what I'm supposed to use it for.

Error Output

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
The key fingerprint is:
05:1e:1e:c1:ac:b9:d1:1c:6a:60:ce:0f:77:6c:78:47 you@i
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|       o=.       |
|    o  o++E      |
|   + . Ooo.      |
|    + O B..      |
|     = *S.       |
|      o          |
|          …

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Fix for: What is randomart produced by ssh-keygen?

Low Risk

The randomart is meant to be an easier way for humans to validate keys. Validation is normally done by a comparison of meaningless strings (i.e. the hexadecimal representation of the key fingerprint), which humans are pretty slow and inaccurate at comparing. Randomart replaces this with structured images that are faster and easier to compare. This paper "Hash Visualization: a New Technique to improve Real-World Security", Perrig A. and Song D., 1999, International Workshop on Cryptographic Tech…

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