Monday, 10 April 2017

Configure Idle Log Out Timeout Interval

Idle or unattended session could be unsecured and we should set some timeout, so that if user is not using its own SSHD session that should disconnect after some time. In SSH configuration we have derivatives that can like same.

First we have to understand how these works. Let's see an examples in which session would disconnect after 3 minutes of idle.

ClientAliveInterval 60

ClientAliveCountMax 3

Examplnantion of these derivatives

ClientAliveCountMax -- This is Client Alive Messages which sent if SSH not received any messages back from the client. After threshold reached client alive messages are being sent, sshd will disconnect the client, terminating the session.The client alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel and therefore will not be spoofable.

ClientAliveInterval -- This is timeout interval after which if no data has been received from the client SSH server will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. The default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to the client.

So after every 60 seconds(ClientAliveInterval) SSH server will send will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. This wil repeat for 3 times means after 3 minutes session get disconnect if there is no response from client.

After editing SSH configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config, restart SSH service

### In case of RHEL 4,5 and 6###
#service sshd restart

### In case of RHEL7###
#systemctl restart sshd


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