Find Randomart of existing ssh key

I created an ssh key with ssh-keygen, and I got this output as a result:

The key fingerprint is:
84:21:3d:ab:d5:5e:05:a0:b6:ab:0f:33:af:3b:3b:82 cidr@randombox
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 4048]----+
| .ooo|
| o ..o |
| o + .oo . |
| . + o.... |
| +...S .. |
| .o . |
| . o o .. |
| E . .o + |
| ...... |
+-----------------+

Is there a way to view the randomart image of an existing key? (Also, what's the purpose of randomart in connection to ssh or cryptography?)

1 Answer

try this:

ssh-keygen -lv -f .ssh/id_rsa

This can be found in ssh-keygen's manpage. As for randomart's purpose:

"The randomart is meant to be an easier way for humans to validate keys.

Validation is normally done by a comparison of meaningless strings (i.e. the hexadecimal representation of the key fingerprint), which humans are pretty slow and inaccurate at comparing. Randomart replaces this with structured images that are faster and easier to compare."

This text was taken from here: