CentOS - Nov 2021 - sshd gives false "Too many authentication failures"

On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 2:32 PM Andreas Fournier
<andreas.fournier at runbox.com> wrote:
>
> I just came across something strange with my fully updated Centos7
> server. When I try to ssh into it the same way I've always done I get
> "Too many authentication failures". This just came out of the
blue. I'm
> using the root account and a password. But in my sshd_config it still
> reads
> #MaxAuthTries 6
> Which I think is the default.
>
> From the console I can log in fine and when I look in the logs for sshd
> I can just see the the attempts I just made, that are less than six and
> no previous denied attemps.
>
> Any clues what's going on?
>
I got the same error once.
In my case the problem was ssh tried to log in with ssh keys before
giving a password prompt.

On Sat, 2021-11-20 at 15:33 +0530, Thomas Stephen Lee
wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 2:32 PM Andreas Fournier
> <andreas.fournier at runbox.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I just came across something strange with my fully updated Centos7
> > server. When I try to ssh into it the same way I've always done I
> > get
> > "Too many authentication failures". This just came out of
the blue.
> > I'm
> > using the root account and a password. But in my sshd_config it
> > still
> > reads
> > #MaxAuthTries 6
> > Which I think is the default.
> > 
> > From the console I can log in fine and when I look in the logs for
> > sshd
> > I can just see the the attempts I just made, that are less than six
> > and
> > no previous denied attemps.
> > 
> > Any clues what's going on?
> > 
> 
> I got the same error once.
> In my case the problem was ssh tried to log in with ssh keys before
> giving a password prompt.
Thanks, same for me. I had added a new key for a different server to
the ssh client machine that got it over the limit.

/Andreas