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V-258875

CAT II (Medium)

The Photon operating system must configure Secure Shell (SSH) to disable X11 forwarding.

Rule ID

SV-258875r933686_rule

STIG

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

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000366

Discussion

X11 is an older, insecure graphics forwarding protocol. It is not used by Photon and should be disabled as a general best practice to limit attack surface area and communication channels.

Check Content

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

# sshd -T|&grep -i X11Forwarding

Example result:

x11forwarding no

If "X11Forwarding" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Ensure the "X11Forwarding" line is uncommented and set to the following:

X11Forwarding no

At the command line, run the following command:

# systemctl restart sshd.service