STIGUI
V-217142CAT I — High severitySV-217142r991589_rule

There must be no shosts.equiv files on the SUSE operating system.

Rule version SLES-12-010410 · STIG v3 · 2025-11-24

Discussion

The shosts.equiv files are used to configure host-based authentication for the system via SSH. Host-based authentication is not sufficient for preventing unauthorized access to the system, as it does not require interactive identification and authentication of a connection request, or for the use of two-factor authentication.

Check

Verify there are no "shosts.equiv" files on the SUSE operating system.

Check the system for the existence of these files with the following command:

# find /etc -name shosts.equiv

If any "shosts.equiv" files are found on the system, this is a finding.

Fix

Remove any "shosts.equiv" files found on the SUSE operating system.

# rm /[path]/[to]/[file]/shosts.equiv

Identifiers

Group ID
V-217142
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-217142r991589_rule
Check ID
C-18370r369582_chk
Fix ID
F-18368r369583_fix