# How to fix WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!

I was planning to do a clean installation after `macOS Catalina` was released. I copied my ssh keys, and I’ve seen the warning when I tried to run git-related commands.

After a short research, I’ve found out the source of the problem is the permissions on the private key file.

```bash
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0644 for '/Users/erdaltsksn/.ssh/id_rsa' are too open.
It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
Load key "/Users/erdaltsksn/.ssh/id_rsa": bad permissions
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
```

To fix this, you need to reset the permissions to default.

```bash
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 644 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/known_hosts
```

That’s all. Now you can use your SSH keys without any errors or warnings.

**Note:** This is not a specific issue to any operating system. This is a security issue related to the **OpenSSH** client.

### References

1.  [https://linuxcommand.org/lc3\_man\_pages/ssh1.html](https://linuxcommand.org/lc3_man_pages/ssh1.html)