The Oracle Linux operating system must be configured so that the SSH daemon does not allow authentication using RSA rhosts authentication.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-221850	SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227	OL07-00-040330	SV-221850r991589_rule	2025-02-20	3

Description
Configuring this setting for the SSH daemon provides additional assurance that remote logon via SSH will require a password, even in the event of misconfiguration elsewhere.

ℹ️ Check
Check the version of the operating system with the following command: # cat /etc/oracle-release If the release is 7.4 or newer this requirement is Not Applicable. Verify the SSH daemon does not allow authentication using RSA rhosts authentication. To determine how the SSH daemon's "RhostsRSAAuthentication" option is set, run the following command: # grep RhostsRSAAuthentication /etc/ssh/sshd_config RhostsRSAAuthentication no If the value is returned as "yes", the returned line is commented out, or no output is returned, this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

Check the version of the operating system with the following command: # cat /etc/oracle-release If the release is 7.4 or newer this requirement is Not Applicable. Verify the SSH daemon does not allow authentication using RSA rhosts authentication. To determine how the SSH daemon's "RhostsRSAAuthentication" option is set, run the following command: # grep RhostsRSAAuthentication /etc/ssh/sshd_config RhostsRSAAuthentication no If the value is returned as "yes", the returned line is commented out, or no output is returned, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Configure the SSH daemon to not allow authentication using RSA rhosts authentication. Add the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config", or uncomment the line and set the value to "no": RhostsRSAAuthentication no The SSH service must be restarted for changes to take effect.