RHEL 9 SSH daemon must not allow rhosts authentication.

STIG ID: RHEL-09-255145  |  SRG: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227 |  Severity: medium |  CCI: CCI-000366 |  Vulnerability Id: V-258005

Vulnerability Discussion

SSH trust relationships mean a compromise on one host can allow an attacker to move trivially to other hosts.

Check

Verify the SSH daemon does not allow rhosts authentication with the following command:

$ sudo grep -ir ignorerhosts /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/*

IgnoreRhosts yes

If the value is returned as "no", the returned line is commented out, or no output is returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the SSH daemon to not allow rhosts authentication.

Add the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config", or uncomment the line and set the value to "yes":

IgnoreRhosts yes

The SSH service must be restarted for changes to take effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service