import pycurl sftp_server = 'sftp://web.sourceforge.net' c = pycurl.Curl() c.setopt(c.URL, sftp_server) c.setopt(c.VERBOSE, True) def keyfunction(known_key, found_key, match): return c.KHSTAT_FINE c.setopt(c.SSH_KNOWNHOSTS, '.known_hosts') c.setopt(c.SSH_KEYFUNCTION, keyfunction) c.perform()