Getting User Public Keys for Github¶

Github¶

To get a specific user's public keys from Github, you just need to execute a curl command.

USER="Kolkhis"
curl https://github.com/${USER}.keys
curl https://github.com/${USER}.gpg

It's simply https://github.com/, followed by the target user's username, with either .keys or .gpg at the end.

.keys¶

Curling https://github.com/USERNAME.keys will return the public SSH keys for the given username.

.gpg¶

Curling https://github.com/USERNAME.gpg will return the public GPG keys for the given username.

Adding to Authorized Keys¶

If you find the need, you can easily add these keys to your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys files with a one-liner.

USER="Kolkhis"
curl https://github.com/${USER}.keys | tee -a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Turn it into a Script¶

#!/bin/bash
# Check inputs: should be `scriptname username provider` 
# or `scriptname username` for github default
if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
    USER="$1"
    shift
    if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
        PROVIDER="$1"
        case $PROVIDER in
            gh|github|github.com)
                GIT_PROVIDER="github.com";
                ;;
            gl|gitlab|gitlab.com)
                GIT_PROVIDER="gitlab.com";
                ;;
            *)
                GIT_PROVIDER="$1";
                ;;
        esac
    else
        GIT_PROVIDER="github.com"
    fi
else
    printf "You did not specify a username to fetch the keys for!\n"
fi

curl https://${GIT_PROVIDER}/${USER}.keys | tee -a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Gitlab¶

Gitlab will respond the same exact way when using curl on the same endpoint.

USER="Kolkhis"
curl https://gitlab.com/USER.keys
curl https://gitlab.com/USER.gpg