The Photon operating system must configure Secure Shell (SSH) to disallow authentication with an empty password.

Blank passwords are one of the first things an attacker checks for when probing a system. Even if the user somehow has a blank password on the OS, SSH must not allow that user to log in.

At the command line, run the following command to verify the running configuration of sshd:

# sshd -T|&grep -i PermitEmptyPasswords

Example result:

permitemptypasswords no

If "PermitEmptyPasswords" is not set to "no", this is a finding.

Navigate to and open:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Ensure the "PermitEmptyPasswords" line is uncommented and set to the following:

PermitEmptyPasswords no

At the command line, run the following command:

# systemctl restart sshd.service