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

Overview

Finding IDVersionRule IDIA ControlsSeverity
V-258857PHTN-40-000188SV-258857r933632_ruleCCI-000366high
Description
SSH trust relationships enable trivial lateral spread after a host compromise and therefore must be explicitly disabled.
STIGDate
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide2023-10-29

Details

Check Text (C-258857r933632_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