| 13.4 |  | System Maintenance via Remote Access |
| 13.4.3 |  | Connecting to the PIX firewall with an SSH client |

| Now that the PIX Security Appliance has been enabled to support SSH remote access, lets look at how certain steps are necessary to actually establish a connection from a remote device to the PIX. To establish an SSH connection to the PIX Security Appliance console, enter the username pix and the Telnet password at the SSH client. When starting an SSH session, the PIX Security Appliance displays a dot (.) on the console before the SSH user authentication prompt appears, as follows:

> pixfirewall(config)#

The display of the dot does not affect the functionality of SSH. The dot appears at the console when generating a server key or decrypting a message using private keys during SSH key exchange before user authentication occurs. These tasks can take up to two minutes or longer. The dot is a progress indicator that verifies that the PIX Security Appliance is busy and has not hung.

In Figure , an RSA key pair is generated for the PIX Security Appliance using the default key modulus size of 768. Host 172.26.26.50 is authorized to initiate an SSH connection to the PIX Security Appliance.

| Web Links Cisco − How To Perform Authentication and Enabling on the Cisco Secure PIX Security Appliance (5.2 Through 6.2) http://www.cisco.com/warp/ public/110/authtopix.pdf

clear ssh

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/
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