**Bug: SSH connection to cPanel server broken after April 15 2026 update**

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Environment

• OS: Windows
• Product: Claude Code Desktop App (Windows)
• Server: cPanel/WHM on Linux (newserver.appraise-services.com.au)
• SSH User: non-root cPanel account

What happened
SSH remote connection was working perfectly before the April 15 2026 update. After the update, connections silently fail with "Connection failed" and no error message or diagnostic information shown in the UI.

Two regressions introduced in this update:

1. Password authentication option removed from connection dialog — previously there was a password field, now it is gone entirely, forcing users to use SSH key auth only.

1. SSH key authentication silently fails — even with a valid RSA PEM format private key (no passphrase), the connection fails with no error. The exact same key connects successfully from PowerShell (ssh -i key user@host works immediately).

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Claude Code desktop app on Windows
2. Add SSH connection with: host, username, and valid private key path
3. Click connect
4. Connection fails silently — "Connection failed" with no error details

Expected behaviour
SSH connection should succeed as it did before the update, or at minimum show a useful error message.

Verified working

• ssh -i C:\Users\info\.ssh\claude_code2 goldsovereign@54.66.239.213 connects immediately from PowerShell
• Host is in known_hosts
• Key is RSA PEM format, no passphrase
• Server is not running as root
• Port 22 is open

Impact
Completely broken workflow that was working the day before. No viable workaround within the desktop app.

What Should Happen?

see above

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

see above

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Version 1.2581.0

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

_No response_