Pageant

Pageant is designed to ease the use of PuTTY, PSCP, Plink and PSFTP, providing an SSH authorization agent ready to store all your private keys within a secure place. The main advantage to this is that you don't have to remember and enter a pass phrase each time you need to use a private key.

This small utility is often integrated with SCP and FTP client packages, aiming to initialize connection sessions without having to provide login data. Practically, it allows automatic logging authentication.

Pageant can handle both protected and unprotected keys (PPK files). It is designed to remember usernames and passwords for an unlimited number of SSH sessions, while also ensuring the security of your login data. Its benefits are related to the fact that it helps you avoid storing decrypted private keys on an easily accessible local disk.

Once started, the application runs hidden in your system tray, enabling you to configure its settings by right-clicking on the icon. Doing so reveals a menu that allows you to add a new key to the list.

The list of keys and the corresponding usernames are displayed within a separate window, which can be used for managing all credential data. The available options allow you to add a new key or remove existing ones and view the key type, its size, fingerprint and a custom comment assigned to each.

Pageant can control the authentication procedure in PuTTY and the PSCP, Plink and PSFTP packages, allowing you to automatically login to an SSH session and saving you the effort of remembering multiple passphrases. It's like a password manager for using PuTTY.