Vulnerability Discussion

By limiting the number of failed login attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128, SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005

Check

Verify RHEL 10 locks an account after three unsuccessful login attempts within a period of 15 minutes with the following command:

$ sudo grep fail_interval /etc/security/faillock.conf
fail_interval = 900

If the "fail_interval" option is not set to "900" or less (but not "0"), the line is commented out, or the line is missing, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 10 to lock out the "root" account after a number of incorrect login attempts within 15 minutes using "pam_faillock.so".

Enable the feature using the following command:

$ authselect enable-feature with-faillock

Edit the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file as follows:

fail_interval = 900