Revision as of 18:18, 10 February 2012

SSH setting: The system allows remote root logins

This means that SSH is configured to allow direct remote root logins. This can make it easier for an attacker to take full control of the system. Remote root logins should be disabled, and users should log in as a non-priviliged user, and use sudo to run root commands. If a full root shell is necessary, then the "su" command should be used. This create defense in depth, making it more difficult for an attacker to gain total control of the system by simply compromising the root password. For an attack to gain root via SSH, they would need to both compromise the users account, as well as the root password. Further, if the user is only allowed to run commands as root via "sudo", then the attackers access to the system through the users account would be severely limited.

Next Steps

If this risk is unacceptable for your system, then you will want to disable this capability in PHP.

Step 1: Log into the ASL GUI, click on Configuration and select the ASL configuration menu option. This will open the ASL configuration screen.

Step 2: Scroll down to PHP_CHECKS and make sure this is set to "yes". By default ASL will only warn about PHP vulnerabilities. If you set this to yes, it will also fix these vulnerabilities. If this is set to "no" the next step will not work, so set this to "yes".

Step 3: Scroll down to SSH_ROOTLOGINS and set this to "no".

Step 4: Click the "update" button.

This will resolve this vulnerability.