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

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-258877	PHTN-40-000214	SV-258877r933692_rule		Medium

Description
If Kerberos is enabled through SSH, sshd provides a means of access to the system's Kerberos implementation. Vulnerabilities in the system's Kerberos implementation may then be subject to exploitation. To reduce the attack surface of the system, the Kerberos authentication mechanism within SSH must be disabled.

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

Details

Check Text ( C-62617r933690_chk )
At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd: # sshd -T|&grep -i KerberosAuthentication Example result: kerberosauthentication no If "KerberosAuthentication" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62526r933691_fix)
Navigate to and open: /etc/ssh/sshd_config Ensure the "KerberosAuthentication" line is uncommented and set to the following: KerberosAuthentication no At the command line, run the following command: # systemctl restart sshd.service