"The lesson is the same as always: extra security is a worthwhile investment. Disable password authentication in favor of ssh keys. I for one am going to buy myself some hardware keys today. :)"

can someone explain to me how SSH keys would have prevented this MITM? My understanding is that when the user gets the message from their SSH software that says "Warning! This SSH fingerprint has changed" and is prompted to re-login, that would happen whether it is by password or by key. So how would keys prevent this? One still has to re-link the SSH endpoints, and do it over a compromised connection in this case.