Today I hit an issue signing in to an new ec2 instance using a private key I generated and downloaded on AWS.

ssh -i ~/.aws/mykey.pem <ip_address>

I was getting this error:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@         WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0640 for '/Users/awolski/.aws/mykey.pem' are too open.
It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: /Users/awolski/.aws/my-key.pem

I thought changing to 0600 would sort the issue out, but it made no difference whatsoever. A quick Google search brought up this answer on Stack Overflow. Apparently it’s outlined in the AWS documentation:

Your key file must not be publicly viewable for SSH to work. Use this command if needed: chmod 400 mykey.pem

I should have known better. Also a little note to self: make sure you use the right user… Ubuntu images use ubuntu:

ssh -i ~/.aws/mykey.pem -l ubuntu <ip_address>

Your thoughts? I'd love to hear them. Please get in contact.