The Photon operating system must implement NIST FIPS-validated cryptography for the following: to provision digital signatures, to generate cryptographic hashes, and to protect unclassified information requiring confidentiality and cryptographic protection in accordance with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, and standards.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-258852	PHTN-40-000182	SV-258852r933617_rule		High

Description
Use of weak or untested encryption algorithms undermines the purposes of utilizing encryption to protect data. The operating system must implement cryptographic modules adhering to the higher standards approved by the federal government since this provides assurance they have been tested and validated. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000478-GPOS-00223, SRG-OS-000396-GPOS-00176

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-10-29

Details

Check Text ( C-62592r933615_chk )
At the command line, run the following command to verify FIPS is enabled for the OS: # cat /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled Example result: 1 If "fips_enabled" is not set to "1", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62501r933616_fix)

Navigate to and open: /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Locate the boot command line arguments. An example follows: linux /boot/$photon_linux root=$rootpartition $photon_cmdline $systemd_cmdline Add "fips=1" to the end of the line so it reads as follows: linux /boot/$photon_linux root=$rootpartition $photon_cmdline $systemd_cmdline fips=1 Note: Do not copy/paste in this example argument line. This may change in future releases. Find the similar line and append "fips=1" to it. Reboot the system for the change to take effect.