VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide

The VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide (V1 R5) has 113 STIG checks. New to STIG checklists? Read What is a STIG checklist?, CKL vs CKLB, and STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

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Severity

Version

V1 · R5

CurrentPublished Wed Sep 30 2026 What changed in V1R5

The Photon operating system must configure sshd to ignore user-specific "known_host" files.

VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide

Assessment Title

Rule Text

The Photon operating system must configure sshd to ignore user-specific "known_host" files.

Description

Discussion Text

Secure Shell (SSH) trust relationships enable trivial lateral spread after a host compromise and therefore must be explicitly disabled. Individual users can have a local list of trusted remote machines that must also be ignored while disabling host-based authentication generally.

New to STIG checklists? Read What is a STIG checklist? and CKL vs CKLB.

Objective

V-256556

Rule

SV-256556r1268251_rule

Severity

medium

Rule Version

PHTN-30-000087

Documentable

false

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Rev 5

Assessment Procedure

Check Text

At the command line, run the following command:

# sshd -T|&grep -i IgnoreUserKnownHosts

Expected result:

IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Implementation Procedure

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Ensure the "IgnoreUserKnownHosts" line is uncommented and set to the following:

IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes

At the command line, run the following command:

# systemctl restart sshd.service

STIG check 79 of 113 in the VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS STIG checklist

← Previous · V-256555The Photon operating system must configure sshd to ignore user-specific trusted hosts lists.Next · V-256557 →The Photon operating system must configure sshd to limit the number of allowed login attempts per connection.