STIGUI
V-238210CAT II — Medium severitySV-238210r1015143_rule

The Ubuntu operating system must implement smart card logins for multifactor authentication for local and network access to privileged and nonprivileged accounts.

Rule version UBTU-20-010033 · STIG v2 · 2025-05-16

Discussion

Without the use of multifactor authentication, the ease of access to privileged functions is greatly increased.

Multifactor authentication requires using two or more factors to achieve authentication.

Factors include: 1) something a user knows (e.g., password/PIN); 2) something a user has (e.g., cryptographic identification device, token); and 3) something a user is (e.g., biometric).

A privileged account is defined as an information system account with authorizations of a privileged user.

Network access is defined as access to an information system by a user (or a process acting on behalf of a user) communicating through a network (e.g., local area network, wide area network, or the internet).

The DOD CAC with DOD-approved PKI is an example of multifactor authentication.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000105-GPOS-00052, SRG-OS-000106-GPOS-00053, SRG-OS-000107-GPOS-00054, SRG-OS-000108-GPOS-00055

Check

Verify the Ubuntu operating system has the packages required for multifactor authentication installed with the following commands:

$ dpkg -l | grep libpam-pkcs11

ii libpam-pkcs11 0.6.8-4 amd64 Fully featured PAM module for using PKCS#11 smart cards

If the "libpam-pkcs11" package is not installed, this is a finding.

Verify the sshd daemon allows public key authentication 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*pubkeyauthentication'

PubkeyAuthentication yes

If this option is set to "no" or is missing, this is a finding.

If conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the Ubuntu operating system to use multifactor authentication for network access to accounts.

Add or update the following line in "/etc/pam.d/common-auth", placing it above any lines containing "pam_unix.so":

auth [success=2 default=ignore] pam_pkcs11.so

Set the sshd option "PubkeyAuthentication yes" in the "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" file.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-238210
Group title
SRG-OS-000105-GPOS-00052
Rule ID
SV-238210r1015143_rule
Check ID
C-41420r951460_chk
Fix ID
F-41379r951461_fix