Details

When the ESXi Shell or SSH services are enabled on a host they will run indefinitely. To avoid having these services left running set the ESXiShellTimeOut. The ESXiShellTimeOut defines a window of time after which the ESXi Shell and SSH services will automatically be terminated.

Solution

From the vSphere Client select the ESXi Host and go to Configuration >> Advanced Settings. Select the UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut value and configure it to 600.

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host run the following commands:

Get-VMHost | Get-AdvancedSetting -Name UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value 600

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMware_vSphere_6-0_ESXi_V1R5_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: System and Communications Protection.This control applies to the following type of system VMware.

References

• 800-53|SC-10
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-001133
• Group-ID|V-63253
• Rule-ID|SV-77743r1_rule
• STIG-ID|ESXI-06-000042
• Vuln-ID|V-63253

Source

• Tenable.com/audits