STIGUI
V-261341CAT II — Medium severitySV-261341r996486_rule

SLEM 5 SSH daemon must perform strict mode checking of home directory configuration files.

Rule version SLEM-05-255080 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

If other users have access to modify user-specific SSH configuration files, they may be able to log on to the system as another user.

Check

Verify SLEM 5 SSH daemon performs strict mode checking of home directory configuration files 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*strictmodes'
     /etc/ssh/sshd_config:StrictModes yes

If "StrictModes" is not set to "yes", is commented out, missing, or conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure SLEM 5 SSH daemon performs strict mode checking of home directory configuration files.

Add or modify the following line in the "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" file:

StrictModes yes

Restart the SSH daemon in order for the changes to take effect:

     > sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

Identifiers

Group ID
V-261341
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-261341r996486_rule
Check ID
C-65070r996484_chk
Fix ID
F-64978r996485_fix