[Contents] [Index]

About This Document >>     Installing SSH Tectia Server for IBM z/OS >>     Getting Started with SSH Tectia Server for IBM z/OS >>     Configuring the Server >>         Server Configuration Files >>         Subconfigurations >>         Ciphers and MACs >>         Configuring Root Logins         Restricting User Logins         Subsystems         Auditing >>         Securing the Server >>             System Administration             File Transfer             Tunneling         Default sshd2_config Configuration File         Default ssh_certd_config Configuration File     Configuring the Client >>     Authentication >>     File Transfer Using SFTP >>     File Transfer Using Transparent FTP Tunneling >>     Tunneling on the Command Line >>     Troubleshooting SSH Tectia Server for IBM z/OS >>     Advanced Information >>     Man Pages >>     Log Messages >>

System Administration

Secure system administration is the traditional use case for Secure Shell.

Disabling Root Login

Usually, allowing direct root logins from the network is a bad idea. It is better to use forced commands to automate tasks requiring privileges (described in Section Forced Commands below), and make people use su or sudo to elevate privileges otherwise.

In addition to AllowUsers and DenyUsers, you can easily disable root logins with passwords (Section Configuring Root Logins). Put the following to your sshd2_config:

PermitRootLogin nopwd

This way, jobs automated with forced commands will work.

Disabling Tunneling

If you are sure you or your users do not need to create tunnels (possibly going around firewall restrictions or such), you can disable tunneling (port forwarding) altogether by adding the following to your sshd2_config:

AllowTcpForwarding no

If you need more fine-grained control, consider using AllowTcpForwardingForUsers (and related keywords DenyTcpForwardingForUsers, AllowTcpForwardingForGroups and DenyTcpForwardingForGroups). With ForwardACL you can even allow and deny tunnels based on originator and destination (based on the IP address and port). See Tunneling.

Disabling Terminal Access

If you only want to enable file transfers or tunneling for users in group users, you can disable terminal access by adding the following to your sshd2_config:

Terminal.DenyGroups users

Other related keywords that can be used are: Terminal.AllowUsers, Terminal.DenyUsers and Terminal.AllowGroups.

It is recommended to deny also agent forwarding if Terminal Access is denied in sshd2_config.

AllowAgentForwarding no

Note that the users will be able to use SFTP and other subsystems defined in the SSH Tectia Server configuration. Any other "exec" and "shell" requests will be denied for the users. This includes forced commands with public keys described in Section Forced Commands and the legacy style password changing when performed as forced command.

Forced Commands (with Public Keys)

If you have maintenance jobs requiring non-interactive access to your server, use public-key authentication and forced commands. This way, if the private key is compromised, the public key cannot be used to perform anything other than the predetermined command on the server. (This is, of course, also bad, but it would be worse if the malicious attacker would have unrestricted access to the machine.)

Do not use the root account for jobs where it is not absolutely necessary.

You can set up a forced command in the authorization file.

key backup-key.pub options command="tar zxvf - /usr/local"

This would, on a successful login with backup-key.pub, force a backup job to start.

You can also use the command that was given on the ssh2 command line:

key backup-key.pub options command="echo $SSH2_ORIGINAL_COMMAND"

Running ssh2:

% ssh2 localhost kukkuu
Authentication successful.
kukkuu
%

See the man page for ssh2 for a detailed description of public-key options (Appendix ssh2).

Note that if the user or the user's group has been denied terminal access (with the Terminal.DenyUsers or Terminal.DenyGroups keywords), also forced commands will be denied.

Restricting Connections

SSH Tectia Server can be configured to reject connection attempts from unknown hosts. For example the following allows connections only from the internal network 10.1.0.0/8 IP addresses and from an external host with the IP address 195.20.116.1:

AllowHosts \i10\.1\..*,\i195\.20\.116\.1

Please see Section Restricting User Logins for information on the regular expression syntax and for more configuration examples and options.

On systems with several network interfaces, SSH Tectia Server can also be bound to a specific network interface so that the server can be only accessed from the intended network. For example, the following will bind the listener to address 10.1.60.25 using port 2222:

ListenAddress 10.1.60.25 Port 2222

Logging

SSH Tectia Server logs are most important for auditing. The logs also provide troubleshooting information, for example, when user authentication fails and a user is unable to log in. Please see Section Auditing for more information.

Notification

It is recommended to notify the users before they decide to log in that their actions are logged. In some jurisdictions this is required.

To display for example the following text to the users before login, the banner message saved to name /etc/ssh2/ssh_banner_message can be used.

Unauthorized use of this system is prohibited. All actions are logged.