Issue With SSHD Password Guesses

[Prashanth Nayanagari -X (pnayanag - HCL TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED at Cisco)]

Hi,

Initially when we do ssh from Cisco IOS Router to my linux machine, we use to see only one password prompt , even though we configured number of password prompts in Linux machine to 3.
So, to overcome this issue , someone changed the values in sshd_config file in openssh-3.5pl.
Before Fix

#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes
#PAMAuthenticationViaKbdInt no

After Fix

ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
PAMAuthenticationViaKbdInt no

So, after this when we do ssh from IOs Router, the number of password prompts got increased, means if we configure 1 in linux device, the number of password prompts for wrong password seen is 2. And if we configure 2, the number of password prompts for wrong password seen is 3.

So, can you please help me , why the Linux machine is behaving like this.
We are using openssh-3.5 and ssh version 2.

Thanks in advance.

With Regards,
Prashanth N.