Use of Private Keys

[Markus Friedl]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 01:29:57PM -0800, Abhijeet Thakare wrote:
> I am not able to figure out where/how we are using the server's private key?

man sshd:

     Whenever a client connects the daemon responds with its public host and
     server keys.  The client compares the RSA host key against its own
     database to verify that it has not changed.  The client then generates a
     256 bit random number.  It encrypts this random number using both the
     host key and the server key, and sends the encrypted number to the serv-
     er. ...


the server uses its private key to prove its indentity to
the connecting user.