Level 1 - Server Level 1 - Workstation
While no .rhosts files are shipped by default, users can easily create them.
This action is only meaningful if .rhosts support is permitted in the file /etc/pam.conf. Even though the .rhosts files are ineffective if support is disabled in /etc/pam.conf, they may have been brought over from other systems and could contain information useful to an attacker for those other systems.
Run the following script and verify no results are returned:
#!/bin/bash
for dir in `cat /etc/passwd | egrep -v '(root|halt|sync|shutdown)' | awk -F: '($7 != "/usr/sbin/nologin") { print $6 }'`; do
for file in $dir/.rhosts; do
if [ ! -h "$file" -a -f "$file" ]; then
echo ".rhosts file in $dir"
fi
done
done
Making global modifications to users' files without alerting the user community can result in unexpected outages and unhappy users. Therefore, it is recommended that a monitoring policy be established to report user .rhosts files and determine the action to be taken in accordance with site policy.