RHEL 9 must not allow users to override SSH environment variables.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-257993	SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00229	RHEL-09-255085	SV-257993r1045049_rule	2025-02-27	2

Description
SSH environment options potentially allow users to bypass access restriction in some configurations.

ℹ️ Check
Verify that unattended or automatic logon via SSH is disabled 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*permituserenvironment' PermitUserEnvironment no If "PermitUserEnvironment" is set to "yes", is missing completely, or is commented out, this is a finding. If the required value is not set, this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

Verify that unattended or automatic logon via SSH is disabled 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*permituserenvironment' PermitUserEnvironment no If "PermitUserEnvironment" is set to "yes", is missing completely, or is commented out, this is a finding. If the required value is not set, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Configure the RHEL 9 SSH daemon to not allow unattended or automatic logon to the system by editing the following line in the "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" or in a file in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config.d": PermitUserEnvironment no Restart the SSH daemon for the setting to take effect: $ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service