STIGUI
V-256406CAT II — Medium severitySV-256406r970703_rule

The ESXi host must terminate shell services after 10 minutes.

Rule version ESXI-70-000042 · STIG v1 · 2026-09-09

Discussion

When the ESXi Shell or Secure Shell (SSH) services are enabled on a host, they will run indefinitely. To avoid having these services left running, set the "ESXiShellTimeOut". The "ESXiShellTimeOut" defines a window of time after which the ESXi Shell and SSH services will be stopped automatically.

Check

From the vSphere Client, go to Hosts and Clusters.

Select the ESXi Host >> Configure >> System >> Advanced System Settings.

Select the "UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut" value and verify it is set to "600" (10 minutes).

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following command:

Get-VMHost | Get-AdvancedSetting -Name UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut

If the "UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut" setting is not set to "600", this is a finding.

Fix

From the vSphere Client, go to Hosts and Clusters.

Select the ESXi Host >> Configure >> System >> Advanced System Settings.

Click "Edit". Select the "UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut" value and configure it to "600".

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host, run the following commands:

Get-VMHost | Get-AdvancedSetting -Name UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value 600

Identifiers

Group ID
V-256406
Group title
SRG-OS-000163-VMM-000700
Rule ID
SV-256406r970703_rule
Check ID
C-60081r885997_chk
Fix ID
F-60024r885998_fix