# Github Warning: Remote Host Identification Has Changed! 😳

# I started seeing this warning

A few months back, I came back from the weekend and started seeing the warning below in the [terminal](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Understanding_client-side_tools/Command_line). I was working on a [GitHub project](https://github.com/100stacks).

```bash
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
SHA256:uNiVztksCsDhcc0u9e8BujQXVUpKZIDTMczCvj3tD2s.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in ~/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Host key for github.com has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.
```

This was an odd change as I was working on the project a few days prior without issue. This error occurred whenever I tried to push updates to the remote repository.

This was the somewhat cryptic warning that stood out.

<div data-node-type="callout">
<div data-node-type="callout-emoji">🛑</div>
<div data-node-type="callout-text">The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is SHA256:uNiVztksCsDhcc0u9e8BujQXVUpKZIDTMczCvj3tD2s. Please contact your system administrator.</div>
</div>

It took a few minutes of troubleshooting to finally realize the phrases `remote host` and `please contact your system administrator` where important here. After a bit of [searching](https://duckduckgo.com/spread), I came across this article for the potentially comprised GitHub RSA SSH Key - [https://github.blog/2023-03-23-we-updated-our-rsa-ssh-host-key/](https://github.blog/2023-03-23-we-updated-our-rsa-ssh-host-key/).

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1689569167032/5349b151-4ba0-4be3-adb1-1fae85164cd8.png align="center")

I was surprised by the unexpected non-warning, though after reading the article I could see why this happened. Next week, I'll get into why this was such a big deal, especially for automated CI/CD pipelines and distributed teams.