SV-281115r1268219: RHEL 10 must log Secure Shell (SSH) connection attempts and failures to the server. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 STIG SCAP Benchmark

Loading benchmark…

Assessment Title

Rule Text

RHEL 10 must log Secure Shell (SSH) connection attempts and failures to the server.

Description

Discussion Text

SSH provides several logging levels with varying amounts of verbosity. "DEBUG" is specifically not recommended other than strictly for debugging SSH communications because it provides so much data that it is difficult to identify important security information. "INFO" or "VERBOSE" level is the basic level that only records login activity of SSH users. In many situations, such as incident response, it is important to determine when a particular user was active on a system. The logout record can eliminate users who disconnected, which helps narrow the field.

How this relates to the STIG checklist: STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000067

References

DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 DISA DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 5733

SCC Automation Reference

The reconstructed evaluation script behind this rule's OVAL check(s) — every module a compound check combines, with this rule's own concrete values and DISA's SCC tool's real per-module mechanism curated from static teardown of SCC releases.

#!/bin/bash
# Reconstructed from oval:mil.disa.stig.rhel10os:def:281115
# RHEL 10 must log Secure Shell (SSH) connection attempts and failures to the server.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# /etc/ssh/sshd_config:LogLevel == VERBOSE
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  ( (sed -En 's/^\s*(?i)LogLevel(?-i)[ \t]+([\w\"]+)[\s]*(?:|(?:#.*))?$/\1/p' '/etc/ssh/sshd_config') | grep -Pq '^VERBOSE$|^"VERBOSE"$' ) || ( (grep -rhP --include='*' '^\s*(?i)LogLevel(?-i)[ \t]+([\w\"]+)[\s]*(?:|(?:#.*))?$' '/etc/ssh/sshd_config.d' | sed -En 's/^\s*(?i)LogLevel(?-i)[ \t]+([\w\"]+)[\s]*(?:|(?:#.*))?$/\1/p') | grep -Pq '^VERBOSE$|^"VERBOSE"$' )
}

if test_1; then
  echo "PASS"
else
  echo "FAIL"
fi

Assessment Script Powered by AISandbox-executed

A standalone Shell script to assess this control automatically. Review before running it in your environment.

Syntax-checked and actually executed in an isolated sandbox (not the real system this checks) — confirmed to run without errors.

#!/bin/sh
# oval:mil.disa.stig.rhel10os:def:281115

if grep -qE '^\\s*(?i)LogLevel(?-i)[ \\t]+VERBOSE[\\s]*(?:|(?:#.*))?$' /etc/ssh/sshd_config || \
   grep -qE '^\\s*(?i)LogLevel(?-i)[ \\t]+VERBOSE[\\s]*(?:|(?:#.*))?$' /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/*; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
else
    echo "FAIL"
    exit 1
fi

Remediation

Configure RHEL 10 to log connection attempts by adding or modifying the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" or in a file in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config.d":

LogLevel VERBOSE

Restart the SSH daemon with the following command for the settings to take effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service