Vulnerability Discussion

Enabling PAM password complexity permits enforcement of strong passwords and consequently makes the system less prone to dictionary attacks.

Check

Verify AlmaLinux OS 9 uses "pwquality" to enforce the password complexity rules in the password-auth file with the following command:

Check for the use of the "pwquality" module in the PAM auth files with the following command:

$ grep pam_pwquality.so /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/password-auth

/etc/pam.d/system-auth:password required pam_pwquality.so retry=3
/etc/pam.d/password-auth:password required pam_pwquality.so retry=3


If the command does not return a line in each file containing the value "pam_pwquality.so", or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

If the system administrator (SA) can demonstrate that the required configuration is contained in a PAM configuration file included or substacked from the system-auth file, this is not a finding.

Fix

Configure AlmaLinux OS 9 to use "pwquality" to enforce password complexity rules.

Add the following line to the "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" files (or modify the line to have the required value):

password required pam_pwquality.so retry=3