STIGUI
V-281216CAT I — High severitySV-281216r1166600_rule

RHEL 10 must enable the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) interface for SSHD.

Rule version RHEL-10-600640 · STIG v1 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

When "UsePAM" is set to "yes", PAM runs through account and session types properly. This is important when restricted access to services based on IP, time, or other factors of the account is needed. Additionally, this ensures users can inherit certain environment variables on login or disallow access to the server.

Check

Verify RHEL 10 SSHD is configured to allow for the "UsePAM" interface 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*usepam' UsePAM yes

If the "UsePAM" keyword is set to "no", is missing, or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 10 SSHD to use the "UsePAM" interface by adding or modifying the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" or in a file in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config.d".

UsePAM yes

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

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

Identifiers

Group ID
V-281216
Group title
SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
Rule ID
SV-281216r1166600_rule
Check ID
C-85777r1166598_chk
Fix ID
F-85682r1166599_fix