Title

All .rhosts, .shosts, or host.equiv files must only contain trusted host-user pairs. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

If these files are not properly configured, they could allow malicious access by unknown malicious users from untrusted hosts who could compromise the system.

Check Content

Locate and examine all .rhosts, .shosts, hosts.equiv, and shosts.equiv files. The .rhosts and .shosts files are stored in home directories. (If a user does not have a home directory assigned in /etc/passwd, the root directory (/) is assigned as a default home directory.) Procedure: # for i in `cut -d: -f6 /etc/passwd | awk '$1 == "" {$1 = "/"} {print $1}'`; do more $i/.rhosts; more $i/.shosts; done # more /etc/hosts.equiv # more /etc/ssh/shosts.equiv If any .rhosts, .shosts, hosts.equiv, or shosts.equiv file contains other than host-user pairs, this is a finding.

Fix Text

If possible, remove the .rhosts, .shosts, hosts.equiv, and shosts.equiv files. If the files are required, remove any content from the files except for necessary host-user pairs.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-226562r603265_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-226562

Group Title: SRG-OS-000480

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.