6.5

Manage Password Expiry
Congure all account password expirations in accordance with your organization's security policies.
By default, all hardened VMware appliances use a 60-day password expiry. On most hardened appliances,
the root account is set to a 365-day password expiry. As a best practice, verify that the expiry on all accounts
meets security and operation requirements standards.
If the root password expires, you cannot reinstate it. You must implement site-specic policies to prevent
administrative and root passwords from expiring.
Procedure
1 Log in to your virtual appliance machines as root and run the # more /etc/shadow command to verify
the password expiry on all accounts.
2 To modify the expiry of the root account, run the # passwd -x 365 root command.
In this command, 365 species the number of days until password expiry. Use the same command to
modify any user, substituting the specic account for root and replacing the number of days to meet
the expiry standards of the organization.
By default, the root password is set for 365 days.
Managing Secure Shell, Administrative Accounts, and Console
Access
For remote connections, all hardened appliances include the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. SSH is disabled by
default on the hardened appliance.
SSH is an interactive command-line environment that supports remote connections to a
vRealize Operations Manager node. SSH requires high-privileged user account credentials. SSH activities
generally bypass the role-based access control (RBAC) and audit controls of the
vRealize Operations Manager node.
As a best practice, disable SSH in a production environment and enable it only to diagnose or troubleshoot
problems that you cannot resolve by other means. Leave it enabled only while needed for a specic purpose
and in accordance with your organization's security policies. If you enable SSH, ensure that it is protected
against aack and that you enable it only for as long as required. Depending on your vSphere conguration,
you can enable or disable SSH when you deploy your Open Virtualization Format (OVF) template.
As a simple test to determine whether SSH is enabled on a machine, try to open a connection by using SSH.
If the connection opens and requests credentials, then SSH is enabled and is available for making
connections.
Secure Shell Root User
Because VMware appliances do not include precongured default user accounts, the root account can use
SSH to directly log in by default. Disable SSH as root as soon as possible.
To meet the compliance standards for nonrepudiation, the SSH server on all hardened appliances is
precongured with the AllowGroups wheel entry to restrict SSH access to the secondary group wheel. For
separation of duties, you can modify the AllowGroups wheel entry in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config le to use
another group such as sshd.
The wheel group is enabled with the pam_wheel module for superuser access, so members of the wheel
group can use the su-root command, where the root password is required. Group separation enables users
to use SSH to the appliance, but not to use the su command to log in as root. Do not remove or modify other
entries in the AllowGroups eld, which ensures proper appliance function. After making a change, restart
the SSH daemon by running the # service sshd restart command.
Chapter 3 Secure Configuration of vRealize Operations Manager
VMware, Inc. 15