Vulnerability Discussion

Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

OL 8 uses pwquality as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require uppercase characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037, SRG-OS-000070-GPOS-00038

Check

Verify the value for "ucredit" in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" or "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/*.conf" files with the following command:

$ sudo grep -r ucredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf*

/etc/security/pwquality.conf:ucredit = -1

If the value of "ucredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding.
If conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure OL 8 to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one uppercase character be used by setting the "ucredit" option.

Add or update the following line in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" file or a configuration file in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/" directory:

ucredit = -1