Secure SSH Key Login on Ubuntu: No Root, No Password

Lock down your Ubuntu server by enabling SSH key authentication and disabling both root and password logins. In this step-by-step beginner guide, you’ll create a non-root sudo user, generate a key pair, copy your public key to your server, and harden your sshd_config so only key-based logins are permitted.

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What You’ll Learn
✅ Add a non-root user with sudo privileges
✅ Generate SSH key pair with ssh-keygen
✅ Copy your public key with ssh-copy-id
✅ Disable root login and password authentication
✅ Update sshd_config for key-only access
✅ Restart SSH and verify your hardened setup

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Intro & why key-based SSH matters
00:36 Create a non-root sudo user
01:37 Use native SSH client
02:35 Generate SSH key pair
03:36 Copy your public key to the server
04:30 Test key-only SSH login
04:45 Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config
07:04 Restart SSH service
07:34 Verify root and password logins are disabled

Important sshd_config File Changes:
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication nos
PermitEmptyPasswords no
KbdInteractiveAuthentication no
UsePAM no
X11Forwarding no
AuthenticationMethods publickey
AllowUsers tony