UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

On one of my production server sshd process is running on top . consuming 100 % amount of CPU .

Below is the output of the sshd process... Please advice I am not sure what should I be doing about this. Can I kill the process ? ... Thanking you in advance.

CPU TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
3 ? 17493 root 237 20 5236K 328K run 2236:48 100.08 99.91 sshd


root> ps -ef |grep 17493
root 25511 22660 0 21:58:21 pts/0 0:00 grep 17493
root 17493 713 255 May 2 ? 2238:11 /opt/ssh/sbin/sshd -R
root> ps -ef |grep 713
root 713 1 0 Feb 7 ? 0:00 /opt/ssh/sbin/sshd
root 17493 713 255 May 2 ? 2238:18 /opt/ssh/sbin/sshd -R
root 22657 713 0 21:34:26 ? 0:00 sshd: root@pts/0
root 25513 22660 1 21:58:28 pts/0 0:00 grep 713

1. Only if you have an alternate way of logging in though X, telnet, rlogin or similar.

2. Or if you are sure you can restart sshd once you have killed it without losing your current login session.