STIGUI
V-282581CAT II — Medium severitySV-282581r1200723_rule

TOSS 5 SSH daemon must not allow Kerberos authentication.

Rule version TOSS-05-000256 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Kerberos authentication for SSH is often implemented using Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSSAPI). If Kerberos is enabled through SSH, the SSH daemon provides a means of access to the system's Kerberos implementation. Vulnerabilities in the system's Kerberos implementations may be subject to exploitation.

Check

Verify the SSH daemon does not allow Kerberos authentication using the following command:

$ sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -dd 2>&1 | awk '/filename/ {print $4}' | tr -d '\r' | tr '\n' ' ' | xargs sudo grep -iH '^\s*kerberosauthentication'

KerberosAuthentication no

If the value is returned as "yes", the returned line is commented out, no output is returned, and the use of Kerberos authentication has not been documented with the information system security officer (ISSO), this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the SSH daemon to not allow Kerberos authentication.

Add the following line in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" or uncomment the line and set the value to "no":

KerberosAuthentication no

Restart the SSH service for changes to take effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

Identifiers

Group ID
V-282581
Group title
SRG-OS-000364-GPOS-00151
Rule ID
SV-282581r1200723_rule
Check ID
C-87142r1200721_chk
Fix ID
F-87047r1200722_fix