Week 21 Capstone - Hardening Locked Out the Deploy User
After a "harden sshd" change, TaskFlow's deploy user can no longer SSH in. Console still works — restore deploy access.
Puzzle Overview
Platform hardening rolled out an sshd drop-in overnight. Console and admin sessions on this host still work, but the TaskFlow deploy pipeline cannot authenticate as `taskflow-deploy` over SSH anymore — BatchMode key login to localhost fails with permission denied.
The OpenSSH daemon is running. The deploy user's key and home directory look fine. Something in the hardening config is deciding who is allowed to log in, and the deploy account is on the wrong side of that decision.
Your job: restore BatchMode SSH as `taskflow-deploy` to 127.0.0.1 without locking yourself out of the box.
Technologies Covered
Choose your plan
Simple, Transparent Pricing
Unlock full access to TeKanAid courses, labs, and bootcamps
Just exploring? Start free below. Want the full experience? Try Premium free for 7 days (card required, $0 today).
Pro
All courses, with lab scripts to run on your own machine
Renews automatically. Cancel anytime.
Final price verified at checkout.
- Full access to all courses
- Lab scripts to download and run on your own machine (hosted labs not included)
- Progress tracking
- Certificate of completion
- Community access
- Self-paced bootcamps
- Premium puzzle library not included (5 free puzzles available)
- New content access
Premium
Full access, including unlimited hosted labs
Renews automatically. Cancel anytime.
Final price verified at checkout.
- Everything in Pro
- Unlimited hands-on labs, fully hosted on TeKanAid Academy (nothing to set up)
- Full access to the puzzle library
- Lab AI Assistant
- Priority support
Just exploring? Start free, no account needed
Three free ways to start. All bridge into the paid Premium catalog when you're ready.
Not ready to commit? The crash course is email-only. No academy account required.