https://vzav.eu/tags/ec2/Recent content in EC2 on Volodymyr's BlogHugo -- gohugo.ioenTue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://vzav.eu/posts/aws/ec2-lost-key/Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://vzav.eu/posts/aws/ec2-lost-key/<div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;-webkit-text-size-adjust:none;"><code class="language-console" data-lang="console"><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ ssh admin@203.0.113.25 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>admin@203.0.113.25: Permission denied (publickey). </span></span></code></pre></div><p>The instance is healthy. The security group is right. The disk is fine. You simply no longer hold the key that gets you in — the laptop was reimaged, the key was never committed anywhere, or it belonged to someone who left.</p> <p>AWS cannot help you here, and that is by design. The fix is to make the instance add a key you <em>do</em> hold, on its next boot, using the one channel you still control: <strong>user data</strong>.</p>