RHEL-07-010300 - The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured so that the SSH daemon does not allow authentication using an empty password.

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Information

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.

Solution

To explicitly disallow remote logon from accounts with empty passwords, add or correct the following line in '/etc/ssh/sshd_config':

PermitEmptyPasswords no

The SSH service must be restarted for changes to take effect. Any accounts with empty passwords should be disabled immediately, and PAM configuration should prevent users from being able to assign themselves empty passwords.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_7_V3R9_STIG.zip

Item Details

References: CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000766, Rule-ID|SV-204425r603261_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-07-010300, STIG-Legacy|SV-86563, STIG-Legacy|V-71939, Vuln-ID|V-204425

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 497d8d5309fe40aac78229a4861dbadd767d881331874117c56e9933d050cb3c