SSH login banner/No root login
 

I have root login disabled in sshd_conf, but you can still put in the username root when you ssh in, just says denied even with the right password.

Is there a way to bring up a message that says denied or something instead of just allowing attempted logins? I'm not too worried about it, fail2ban will ban the IP after 2 failed attempts, but it'd be nice to have the option to not even allow attempts.

I know there's the banner.net option, but that comes up before the username.

Well if its going to deny evreytime even if the password is correct whats the point?

Because people try anyways.

Any way to have iptables or something along those lines look and see what the username entered was to just ban it instantly? Not sure since I don't know if the username going through ssh is encrypted or not.

I'd guess this is something that fail2ban would need to do, but I'm unable to find anything to indicate what config changes you'd need to implement it.

I think it may be a case of let them have their attempts & then get jailed!