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V-258877

CAT II (Medium)

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

Rule ID

SV-258877r933692_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000366

Discussion

If Kerberos is enabled through SSH, sshd provides a means of access to the system's Kerberos implementation. Vulnerabilities in the system's Kerberos implementation may then be subject to exploitation. To reduce the attack surface of the system, the Kerberos authentication mechanism within SSH must be disabled.

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd:

# sshd -T|&grep -i KerberosAuthentication

Example result:

kerberosauthentication no

If "KerberosAuthentication" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Ensure the "KerberosAuthentication" line is uncommented and set to the following:

KerberosAuthentication no

At the command line, run the following command:

# systemctl restart sshd.service