The Photon operating system must be configured to protect the Secure Shell (SSH) private host key from unauthorized access.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-258896	SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227	PHTN-40-000234	SV-258896r991589_rule	2024-07-11	2

Description
If an unauthorized user obtains the private SSH host key file, the host could be impersonated.

ℹ️ Check
At the command line, run the following command: # stat -c "%n permissions are %a and owned by %U:%G" /etc/ssh/*key Example result: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root If any key file listed is not owned by root or not group owned by root or does not have permissions of "0600", this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

At the command line, run the following command: # stat -c "%n permissions are %a and owned by %U:%G" /etc/ssh/*key Example result: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key permissions are 600 and owned by root:root If any key file listed is not owned by root or not group owned by root or does not have permissions of "0600", this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
At the command line, run the following commands for each returned file: # chmod 600 <file> # chown root:root <file> # systemctl restart sshd.service