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V-258785

CAT II (Medium)

The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must disable port forwarding.

Rule ID

SV-258785r933416_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 8.0 ESXi Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000366

Discussion

While enabling Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) tunnels is a valuable function of sshd, this feature is not appropriate for use on the ESXi hypervisor.

Check Content

From an ESXi shell, run the following command:

# esxcli system ssh server config list -k allowtcpforwarding

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands:

$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2
$esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.list.invoke() | Where-Object {$_.Key -eq 'allowtcpforwarding'}

Example result:

allowtcpforwarding no

If "allowtcpforwarding" is not configured to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text

From an ESXi shell, run the following command:

# esxcli system ssh server config set -k allowtcpforwarding -v no

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands:

$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2
$arguments = $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.CreateArgs()
$arguments.keyword = 'allowtcpforwarding'
$arguments.value = 'no'
$esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.Invoke($arguments)