4.5.3.3 OpenSSH: Remove .shosts files

Information

The recommendation is to remove any existing .shosts files from all user home directories.

Rationale:

The existence of .shosts files in a user home directory, combined with the correct SSH parameter can allow passwordless authentication between servers. As previous recommendations in this section disable this authentication method, these files, if they exist, should be removed.

Solution

List out all of the existing .shost files:

find / -name '.shosts' -print

Review the list of .shost files and remove them individually, or all at once:
Individually:

rm <full pathname>

All at once:

find / -name '.shosts' -exec rm {} ;

Default Value:

N/A

Additional Information:

Reversion:

Any deleted files would need to be restored from a backup.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/13069

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7b.

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 7ac794b897a97ac3ca805b7d238c2f5a879d21564eed3e1f457bfa781ecaa580