The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must ignore .rhosts files.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-258738	SRG-OS-000107-VMM-000530	ESXI-80-000052	SV-258738r933275_rule	2023-10-11	1

Description
SSH trust relationships mean a compromise on one host can allow an attacker to move trivially to other hosts. SSH can emulate the behavior of the obsolete "rsh" command in allowing users to enable insecure access to their accounts via ".rhosts" files.

ℹ️ Check
From an ESXi shell, run the following command: # esxcli system ssh server config list -k ignorerhosts or From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands: $esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2 $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.list.invoke() \| Where-Object {$_.Key -eq 'ignorerhosts'} Example result: ignorerhosts yes If "ignorerhosts" is not configured to "yes", this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

From an ESXi shell, run the following command: # esxcli system ssh server config list -k ignorerhosts or From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands: $esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2 $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.list.invoke() | Where-Object {$_.Key -eq 'ignorerhosts'} Example result: ignorerhosts yes If "ignorerhosts" is not configured to "yes", this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
From an ESXi shell, run the following command: # esxcli system ssh server config set -k ignorerhosts -v yes or From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands: $esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2 $arguments = $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.CreateArgs() $arguments.keyword = 'ignorerhosts' $arguments.value = 'yes' $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.Invoke($arguments)

✔️ Fix

From an ESXi shell, run the following command: # esxcli system ssh server config set -k ignorerhosts -v yes or From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands: $esxcli = Get-EsxCli -v2 $arguments = $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.CreateArgs() $arguments.keyword = 'ignorerhosts' $arguments.value = 'yes' $esxcli.system.ssh.server.config.set.Invoke($arguments)