Intermittent failure in Checkout code step: "Authentication failed"

Build Environment
1

Hi,

I am experiencing an intermittent issue during the Checkout code step. It doesn’t happen every time, but I occasionally get the following authentication error:

Occurrence time:
From 2026-02-26 00:55 UTC

Error Logs:

Using subcommand credential helper for git operations
Cloning git repository - https://github.com/[Org]/[Repo].git
Creating a blobless clone
Cloning into '.'...
remote: Invalid username or token. Password authentication is not supported for Git operations.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/[Org]/[Repo].git/'
Error: error running git clone "https://github.com/[Org]/[Repo].git": exit status 128
error running git clone "https://github.com/[Org]/[Repo]": exit status 128
Error: exit status 1: Error: error running git clone "https://github.com/[Org]/[Repo].git": exit status 128

exit status 1

exit status 1

Has anyone else encountered this issue recently? Any advice on how to resolve this would be appreciated.

Thank you.

4 Likes
2

We are facing the exact same intermittent issue on our CircleCI < - > Github, starting from yesterdat 26thFeb
We’ve also contacted their support. We’ll see.

3

Yes. I’ve run into it about a dozen times this week on projects that haven’t had any any changes made to their pipelines, authentication, GitHub App, etc. As you say, intermittent failures, so I’m just re-running jobs that fail in this way for now, but if it goes on much longer I think I’ll switch from the GitHub App back to Deploy Keys in hopes that cloning over SSH/with a different mechanism side-steps the issue.

4

CircleCI/Github mentions that the issue is fixed but it isn’t.

Still happening all the time.

5

Thank you for your reply.
If this issue recurs in the future, I’m thinking of replacing the job with one that uses git clone command instead of checkout.
However, I don’t think this is a fundamental solution.