Skip to content
ATO Pathways
  Log In

Prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display

An XCCDF Rule

Description

The SSH daemon should prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.
The default SSH configuration for X11UseLocalhost is yes, which prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.
To explicitly prevent remote connections to the proxy display, add or correct the following line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config: X11UseLocalhost yes

Rationale

When X11 forwarding is enabled, there may be additional exposure to the server and client displays if the sshd proxy display is configured to listen on the wildcard address. By default, sshd binds the forwarding server to the loopback address and sets the hostname part of the DISPLAY environment variable to localhost. This prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.

ID
xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_rule_sshd_x11_use_localhost
Severity
Medium
References
Updated



Remediation - Shell Script

# Remediation is applicable only in certain platforms
if [ ! -f /.dockerenv ] && [ ! -f /run/.containerenv ]; then

if [ -e "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" ] ; then
    
    LC_ALL=C sed -i "/^\s*X11UseLocalhost\s\+/Id" "/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

Remediation - Ansible

- name: Prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display
  block:

  - name: Check for duplicate values
    lineinfile:
      path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config