STIGUI
V-253106CAT II — Medium severitySV-253106r991589_rule

The TOSS SSH daemon must perform strict mode checking of home directory configuration files.

Rule version TOSS-04-040650 · STIG v2 · 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 the SSH daemon performs strict mode checking of home directory configuration files with the following command:

$ sudo grep -i strictmodes /etc/ssh/sshd_config

StrictModes yes

If "StrictModes" is set to "no", is missing, or the returned line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure SSH to perform strict mode checking of home directory configuration files. Uncomment the "StrictModes" keyword in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" and set the value to "yes":

StrictModes yes

The SSH daemon must be restarted for the changes to take effect. To restart the SSH daemon, run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

Identifiers

Group ID
V-253106
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-253106r991589_rule
Check ID
C-56559r824988_chk
Fix ID
F-56509r824989_fix