This system is for the use of authorized users only.

How to bypass the login banners?

There is actually more than one banner to bypass. One of the them is the message of the day banner, commonly located in /etc/motd. Typically friendly, example in AIX

****************************************************************************
* *
* *
* Welcome to AIX Version 6.1! *
* *
* *
* Please see the README file in /usr/lpp/bos for information pertinent to *
* this release of the AIX Operating System. *
* *
* *
***************************************************************************


This is easy to bypass, simply place .hushlogin file on your serverside homedirectory :

$ touch $HOME/.hushlogin
$


Yes, it is that easy.

A bit more cumbersome is the ssh banner. Which rather have an aggressive look with criminal punishment threats.

|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| This system is for the use of authorized users only. |
| Individuals using this computer system without authority, or in |
| excess of their authority, are subject to having all of their |
| activities on this system monitored and recorded by system |
| personnel. |
| |
| In the course of monitoring individuals improperly using this |
| system, or in the course of system maintenance, the activities |
| of authorized users may also be monitored. |
| |
| Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring |
| and is advised that if such monitoring reveals possible |
| evidence of criminal activity, system personnel may provide the |
| evidence of such monitoring to law enforcement officials. |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|

Well, you could delete it from your ssh server but this would not please your sysadmins. The banner is actually a pre-authentication banner, so you must configure it on the client. With the unix ssh client, you lower the log level. Either with a command line option, -o LogLevel=quiet, or in a configfile

$ cat $HOME/.ssh/config
LogLevel=Quiet
StrictHostKeyChecking=no
NumberOfPasswordPrompts=1


This is so quiet that you will not get any feedback if you cannot connect, but I prefer quiet than noisy.

A very commonly used Windows ssh client is putty, and there, O miracle, there is a pre-authentication-banner option to uncheck in SSH-Auth.

This appeared in putty 0.62 and it made my day today 🙂