The Photon operating system must configure Secure Shell (SSH) to disallow HostbasedAuthentication.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-258857	PHTN-40-000188	SV-258857r933632_rule		High

Description
SSH trust relationships enable trivial lateral spread after a host compromise and therefore must be explicitly disabled.

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

Details

Check Text ( C-62597r933630_chk )
At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd: # sshd -T|&grep -i HostbasedAuthentication Example result: hostbasedauthentication no If "HostbasedAuthentication" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62506r933631_fix)
Navigate to and open: /etc/ssh/sshd_config Ensure the "HostbasedAuthentication" line is uncommented and set to the following: HostbasedAuthentication no At the command line, run the following command: # systemctl restart sshd.service