SSH error messages (bug id=234793) ) RELENG_12

[Matt Garber]

> 
>> Does anyone know what the cause is of this fail message ?
>> 
>> (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=234793)
>> 
>> its triggered by a normal ssh key'd login, but sshd is running with
>> VERBOSE logging. 
>> 
>> sshd[63290]: Failed unknown for testuser1 from 192.168.xx.yyy port
>> 60643 ssh2 ?
>> 
>> The user is able to login no problem, but the error message is bubbling
>> up in our HIDS. We had to white list it, but it would be useful to
>> understand exactly why and what is failing.
>> 
>>    —Mike
> 
> It’s one of the other SSH authentication types (e.g., GSSAPI, password, etc.) which is in the processing order before public key. I’m assuming you’re seeing that ‘failure’ immediately before your successful key authentication in auth.log; I actually had to switch back to INFO for logging because that ‘failure’ trips up sshguard which kicks in and blocks the IP despite the public key auth succeeding right after whichever other auth type is tried and fails.
> 
> (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to determine which specific other authentication type was being tried first, since moving logging back to INFO resolved my immediate issue of getting blocked by sshguard before successfully processing my key.)

I’d also like to point out that whatever authentication method is now being tried first was a change from 11.3-RELEASE, as I didn’t encounter that ordering issue in my VERBOSE logs triggering sshguard until after upgrading to 12.0-RELEASE. I always have password auth disabled (only use public keys), but also tried explicit disable statements for GSSAPI and the several other auth types I could think of, but unfortunately wasn’t able to determine which auth type that log line corresponded to. It could also be an auth type that was previously used, but sshd in 12.0-RELEASE re-ordered the processing sequence to try it before public keys.


Thanks,
--
Matt Garber