A Windows System Admin's Blog

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Using your SSH Keys from 1Password in WinSCP

So my main workstation and laptop run Windows. We run 1Password to store our passwords and SSH keys and while with the 1Password SSH Agent I can use keys for OpenSSH in Windows and this works well, the same isn’t true for use with WinSCP which only uses Putty Agent (Pageant) to access keys and isn’t exposed to any other agents.

After some Google-Fu, I stumbled upon this project, which acts as a bridge for any pageant requests to hit OpenSSH, which will in turn hit the 1Password SSH Agent..

So to get this working, firstly ensure that your 1Password SSH Agent is running. Open 1Password, go to Settings > Developer and tick the Use SSH Agent box and it will prompt to disable the Windows OpenSSH Agent service, just say yes and it should then show a status of running.

Next, go and download the latest release, or use the following command to install automatically via winget

GitHub – ndbeals/winssh-pageant: Bridge to Windows OpenSSH agent from Pageant. This means the openssh agent has the keys and this proxies pageant requests to it. · GitHub

winget install winssh-pageant

Finally, launch WinSCP and under the Advanced Site Settings, you’ll need to tick Allow Agent Forwarding.

The next time you connect it should then prompt that winssh-paageant to use an SSH Key similar to the below.

If you have any issues, you might need to add the –no-pageant-pipe command line to the shortcut that lives in the Startup folder in the Windows start menu.

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