How to fix “Nessus failed to load the SSH private key” error? If you are using Nessus to scan Linux hosts and authenticate by key, you may encounter this problem.
You have generated the keys correctly, placed the public key on a remote server. You can connect to this server using the private key.
ssh -p22 -i private_key user@server.corporation.com
But when scanning with Nessus, you get weird errors in the various plugin outputs:
- Target Credential Status by Authentication Protocol – Failure for Provided Credentials
- Nessus failed to load the SSH private key. Is the associated passphrase correct?
- Failed to parse the given key information.
- Unable to login to remote host with supplied credential sets.