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The Photon operating system must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.

Overview

Finding IDVersionRule IDIA ControlsSeverity
V-258824PHTN-40-000046SV-258824r1137691_ruleCCI-000213medium
Description
If the system does not require authentication before it boots into single-user mode, anyone with console access to the system can trivially access all files on the system. GRUB2 is the boot loader for Photon OS and can be configured to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu. Note: Photon does not support building grub changes via grub2-mkconfig.
STIGDate
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide2026-06-02

Related Frameworks

1 mapping across 5 frameworks
SCF0 mappings

No source states a mapping between these directly.

Also reachable in 3 hops (20) derived by us, not asserted by any source

Each of these is a route we composed by chaining published mappings. No publisher states a relationship between the two endpoints.

CFG-02Secure Baseline Configurations
1.00
CRY-01Use of Cryptographic Controls
1.00
DCH-01Data Protection
1.00
HRS-02Position Categorization
1.00
HRS-11Separation of Duties (SoD)
1.00
IAC-01Identity & Access Management (IAM)
1.00
IAC-01.2Authenticate, Authorize and Audit (AAA)
1.00
IAC-02Identification & Authentication for Organizational Users
1.00
IAC-03Identification & Authentication for Non-Organizational Users
1.00
IAC-04Identification & Authentication for Devices
1.00

+10 more (top 10 by confidence shown)

NIST 800-530 mappings

No source states a mapping between these directly.

Also reachable in 2 hops (93) derived by us, not asserted by any source

Each of these is a route we composed by chaining published mappings. No publisher states a relationship between the two endpoints.

AC-10Concurrent Session Control
1.00
AC-16Security and Privacy Attributes
1.00
AC-17(1)Monitoring and Control
1.00
AC-17(10)Authenticate Remote Commands
1.00
AC-17(2)Protection of Confidentiality and Integrity Using Encryption
1.00
AC-18(1)Authentication and Encryption
1.00
AC-2(1)Automated System Account Management
1.00
AC-2(10)Shared and Group Account Credential Change
1.00
AC-2(11)Usage Conditions
1.00
AC-2(2)Automated Temporary and Emergency Account Management
1.00

+83 more (top 10 by confidence shown)

NIST 800-1710 mappings

No source states a mapping between these directly.

Also reachable in 3 hops (2) derived by us, not asserted by any source

Each of these is a route we composed by chaining published mappings. No publisher states a relationship between the two endpoints.

3.1.1
1.00
3.1.2
1.00
CCI1 mapping
CCI-000213
1.00
NIST CSF 2.00 mappings

No source states a mapping between these directly.

Also reachable in 3 hops (3) derived by us, not asserted by any source

Each of these is a route we composed by chaining published mappings. No publisher states a relationship between the two endpoints.

PR.AA-05
1.00
PR.DS-10
1.00
PR.IR-01
1.00

Who does this work

17 NICE work roles and 9 EC-Council certifications.

This is an inference across published mappings, not a single claim by anyone. This check maps to a control, which maps to a Cybersecurity Framework outcome, which NIST assigns to the work roles below. EC-Council separately maps its certifications to those same roles.

A certification prepares someone for a role. It is not evidence that a holder is qualified, and neither NIST nor EC-Council has stated that any certification here addresses this check.

Work-role assignments published by NIST (NICE Framework Components 2.2.0 and the CSF 2.0 OLIR crosswalk). Certification mappings published by EC-Council.

Details

Check Text (C-258824r1137691_chk)

At the command line, run the following command to verify a password is required to edit the grub bootloader to boot into single-user mode: # grep -E "^set\ssuperusers|^password_pbkdf2" /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Example output: set superusers="root" password_pbkdf2 root grub.pbkdf2.sha512.[password_hash] If superusers is not set, this is a finding. If a password is not set for the super user, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62473r933532_fix)

Before proceeding, ensure a snapshot is taken to rollback if needed. At the command line, run the following command to generate a grub password: # grub2-mkpasswd-pbkdf2 Enter a secure password and ensure this password is stored for break-glass situations. Users will not be able to recover the root account without knowing this separate password. Copy the resulting encrypted string. An example string is below: grub.pbkdf2.sha512.10000.983A13DF3C51BB2B5130F0B86DDBF0DEA1AAF766BD1F16B7840F79CE3E35494C4B99F505C99C150071E563DF1D7FE1F45456D5960C4C79DAB6C49298B02A5558.5B2C49E12D43CC5A876F6738462DE4EFC24939D4BE486CDB72CFBCD87FDE93FBAFCB817E01B90F23E53C2502C3230502BC3113BE4F80B0AFC0EE956E735F7F86 Note: The grub2 package must be installed to generate a password for grub. Navigate to and open: /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Find the line that begins with "set rootpartition". Below this line, paste the following on its own line: set superusers="root" Note: The superusers name can be a value other than root and is not tied to an OS account. Below this paste the following, substituting the user's own encrypted string from the steps above: password_pbkdf2 root <YOUR-LONG-STRING-FROM-ABOVE> Next edit the default Photon menuentry block with the "--unrestricted" parameter so that it will continue to boot without prompting for credentials, for example: menuentry "Photon" --unrestricted { linux /boot/$photon_linux root=$rootpartition $photon_cmdline $systemd_cmdline audit=1 if [ -f /boot/$photon_initrd ]; then initrd /boot/$photon_initrd fi } When booting now, if users press "e" when the Photon splash screen appears, users will be prompted for credentials before being presented the option to edit the boot loader before system startup. Note: Photon does not support building grub changes via grub2-mkconfig.