Title

RHEL 9 SSH daemon must prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

When X11 forwarding is enabled, there may be additional exposure to the server and client displays if the sshd proxy display is configured to listen on the wildcard address. By default, sshd binds the forwarding server to the loopback address and sets the hostname part of the "DISPLAY" environment variable to localhost. This prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.

Check Content

Verify the SSH daemon prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display with the following command: $ sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -dd 2>&1 | awk '/filename/ {print $4}' | tr -d '\r' | tr '\n' ' ' | xargs sudo grep -iH '^\s*x11uselocalhost' X11UseLocalhost yes If the "X11UseLocalhost" keyword is set to "no", is missing, or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the SSH daemon to prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display. Add the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config", or uncomment the line and set the value to "yes": X11UseLocalhost yes The SSH service must be restarted for changes to take effect: $ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-258011r952218_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-258011

Group Title: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227

Expert Comments

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