The Photon operating system must configure Secure Shell (SSH) to ignore user-specific known_host files.
Overview
| Finding ID | Version | Rule ID | IA Controls | Severity |
| V-258881 | PHTN-40-000218 | SV-258881r991589_rule | Medium |
| Description |
| SSH trust relationships enable trivial lateral spread after a host compromise and therefore must be explicitly disabled. Individual users can have a local list of trusted remote machines, which must also be ignored while disabling host-based authentication generally. |
| STIG | Date |
| VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide | 2024-07-11 |
Details
| Check Text (C-62621r933702_chk) |
| At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd: # sshd -T|&grep -i IgnoreUserKnownHosts Expected result: ignoreuserknownhosts yes If "IgnoreUserKnownHosts" is not set to "yes", this is a finding. |
| Fix Text (F-62530r933703_fix) |
| Navigate to and open: /etc/ssh/sshd_config Ensure the "IgnoreUserKnownHosts" line is uncommented and set to the following: IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes At the command line, run the following command: # systemctl restart sshd.service |