Some SSH connections using deploy keys are failing

criticalGitHubJul 21, 2026 10:31Duration: 1h 25m

dnsauthenticationdeployment

DNS FailureDeployment FailureAuthentication Issue

Summary

This incident has been resolved. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we addressed this issue. A detailed root cause analysis will be shared as soon as it is available.

Impact

critical

Timeline

Jul 21, 2026 10:31

[investigating] We are investigating reports of impacted performance for some GitHub services.

via statuspage

+33m

Jul 21, 2026 11:04

[investigating] We are investigating reports of intermittent SSH authentication failures affecting connections that use deploy keys. Customers may experience failed SSH connections when interacting with repositories via deploy keys. Our engineering team is actively investigating the root cause and working toward resolution.

via statuspage

+42m

Jul 21, 2026 11:46

[investigating] We have identified a recent code change as a potential cause of the SSH authentication failures affecting deploy key connections. Our engineering team is rolling back this change. Customers using deploy keys for SSH access to repositories may continue to experience intermittent connection failures until the fix is deployed.

via statuspage

+10m

Jul 21, 2026 11:57

[resolved] This incident has been resolved. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we addressed this issue. A detailed root cause analysis will be shared as soon as it is available.

via statuspage

Lessons Learned

⚠GitHub has experienced 117 incidents in the past year. This frequency suggests systemic reliability challenges that may warrant additional monitoring.

📊Incidents related to dns, authentication, deployment have occurred 236 times across all providers in the past year. This is one of the most common failure categories in cloud infrastructure.

💡This incident is categorized as: DNS Failure, Deployment Failure, Authentication Issue. Consider implementing preventive measures specific to this failure category.