curl/docs/cmdline-opts/knownhosts.md

c	SPDX-License-Identifier	Long	Arg	Protocols	Help	Category	Added	Multi	See-also	Example
Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.	curl	knownhosts	<file>	SCP SFTP	Specify knownhosts path	ssh	8.17.0	single	hostpubsha256 hostpubmd5 insecure key	--cert certificate --key here $URL

--knownhosts

When doing SCP and SFTP transfers, curl automatically checks a database containing identification for all hosts it has ever been used with to verify that the host it connects to is the same as previously. Host keys are stored in such a known hosts file. By default curl uses ~/.ssh/known_hosts in the user's home directory.

This option lets a user specify a specific file to check the host against.

The known host check can be disabled with --insecure, but that makes the transfer insecure.