The Photon operating system must configure Secure Shell (SSH) to disallow authentication with an empty password.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-258870	PHTN-40-000207	SV-258870r933671_rule		High

Description
Blank passwords are one of the first things an attacker checks for when probing a system. Even if the user somehow has a blank password on the OS, SSH must not allow that user to log in.

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

Details

Check Text ( C-62610r933669_chk )
At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd: # sshd -T|&grep -i PermitEmptyPasswords Example result: permitemptypasswords no If "PermitEmptyPasswords" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62519r933670_fix)
Navigate to and open: /etc/ssh/sshd_config Ensure the "PermitEmptyPasswords" line is uncommented and set to the following: PermitEmptyPasswords no At the command line, run the following command: # systemctl restart sshd.service