Logging failed attempts to correct usernames

Daniel Shahaf danielsh at apache.org
Thu Jun 23 01:17:10 EST 2011


[ using FreeBSD 8.2, but I don't think the problem is specific to their port ]

For fail2ban purposes I'd like to log failed SSH authentication attempts
of correct (i.e., existing) usernames.

I have no issue with the logging of authn attempts to non-existing
usernames.

I've tried to set LogLevel=VERBOSE and MaxAuthAttempts=1 in sshd_config,
but even then I didn't see /var/log/auth.log entries for failed login
attempts from a third host to an existing username.  (I didn't spot any
other relevant knobs in sshd_config(5).)

I assumed I'd see such log entries since the docs of MaxAuthAttempts
state any failed attempts after MaxAuthAttempts/2 will be logged, so
I interpreted that even the first failed authn attempt would be logged
when MaxAuthAttempts=1.

How can I cause sshd to log all failed authentication attempts to
existing usernames?

Thanks,


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