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V-258738

CAT II (Medium)

The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must ignore .rhosts files.

Rule ID

SV-258738r933275_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 8.0 ESXi Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000767

Discussion

SSH trust relationships mean a compromise on one host can allow an attacker to move trivially to other hosts. SSH can emulate the behavior of the obsolete "rsh" command in allowing users to enable insecure access to their accounts via ".rhosts" files.

Check Content

From an ESXi shell, run the following command:

# esxcli system ssh server config list -k ignorerhosts

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 'ignorerhosts'}

Example result:

ignorerhosts yes

If "ignorerhosts" is not configured to "yes", this is a finding.

Fix Text

From an ESXi shell, run the following command:

# esxcli system ssh server config set -k ignorerhosts -v yes

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 = 'ignorerhosts'
$arguments.value = 'yes'
$esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.Invoke($arguments)