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The Photon operating system must configure sshd to ignore user-specific "known_host" files.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-256556 PHTN-30-000087 SV-256556r887342_rule Medium
Description
Secure Shell (SSH) trust relationships enable trivial lateral spread after a host compromise and therefore must be explicitly disabled. Individual users can have a local list of trusted remote machines that must also be ignored while disabling host-based authentication generally.
STIG Date
VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide 2023-12-01

Details

Check Text ( C-60231r887340_chk )
At the command line, run the following command:

# sshd -T|&grep -i IgnoreUserKnownHosts

Expected result:

IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-60174r887341_fix)
Navigate to and open:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Ensure the "IgnoreUserKnownHosts" line is uncommented and set to the following:

IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes

At the command line, run the following command:

# systemctl restart sshd.service