SSH asks for passphrase three times and authenticates no matter what is entered

Solution 1:

I wonder if you are getting confused between a passphrase and password.

SSH has multiple different mechanisms of authenticating, and tries each one in turn. In this case it is trying to use public/private key encryption (where you are being asked for your passphrase) and then if that fails - which is happening here - it will fall back to password authentication.

You have a private key on your client (it will be in a file id_rsa). If you enter it wrong multiple times - or don't have it - it will skip to the next authentication mechanism which is password.

My guess is your passphrase is protected by a "enter" key or something similarly trivial. If this is the case you will want to change the passphrase on your private key - which you can likely do with 'ssh-keygen' -p