Error: Invalid Identification String

IP Fabric Version: All

Affected Platforms: Cisco IOS 12.4(15)T4 and other versions

Description: Under certain circumstances, the IOS SSH server component may report a bogus version of 2.99 instead of the widely recognized versions 1.5, 1.99, and 2.0. This leads to the failure of SSH version validation and subsequent discovery issues.

For more details see: CSCsq51052

Fix: To resolve the issue, enforce SSH version 2 on IOS devices using the command ip ssh version 2. Subsequently, validate the current SSH version using the command show ip ssh.