Vulnerability Discussion

SSH daemon privilege separation causes the SSH process to drop root privileges when not needed, which would decrease the impact of software vulnerabilities in the unprivileged section.

Check

Determine the version of SSH using the following command:

# ssh -V
OpenSSH_7.9p1

If the version of SSH is 7.5 or newer, this is Not Applicable.

Verify the SUSE operating system SSH daemon is configured to use privilege separation.

Check that the SUSE operating system SSH daemon performs privilege separation with the following command:

# sudo grep -i usepriv /etc/ssh/sshd_config

UsePrivilegeSeparation yes

If the "UsePrivilegeSeparation" keyword is not set to "yes" or "sandbox", is missing, or the returned line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the SUSE operating system SSH daemon is configured to use privilege separation.

Uncomment the "UsePrivilegeSeparation" keyword in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" and set the value to "yes" or "sandbox":

UsePrivilegeSeparation yes