$re = '/user\s+(?<User>\w+)/m';
$str = 'Mon Aug 06 2018 19:35:34 whostname sshd[4191]: Failed password for backup from 27.96.191.11 port 3558 ssh2
Mon Aug 06 2018 19:35:59 whostname sshd[5625]: Failed password for nobody from 27.96.191.11 port 1574 ssh2
Mon Aug 06 2018 19:36:07 whostname sshd[3840]: Failed password for invalid user uni from 27.96.191.11 port 4916 ssh2
Mon Aug 06 2018 19:36:26 whostname sshd[66863]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user michael by (uid=0)
Mon Aug 06 2018 19:36:26 whostname sshd[1573]: Failed password for invalid user harry from 27.96.191.11 port 1025 ssh2';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php