Vulnerability Discussion

Passwords must be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If passwords are not encrypted, they can be plainly read (i.e., clear text) and easily compromised. Passwords that are encrypted with a weak algorithm are no more protected than if they are kept in plain text.

Using more hashing rounds makes password cracking attacks more difficult.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000073-GPOS-00041, SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061

Check

Verify RHEL 10 is configured to use a sufficient number of rounds for password hashing with the following command:

$ sudo grep rounds /etc/pam.d/password-auth
password sufficient pam_unix.so sha512 rounds=100000

If the setting is not configured or "rounds" is less than "100000", this a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 10 to use "100000" hashing rounds for hashing passwords.

Add or modify the following line in "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" and set "rounds" to "100000":

password sufficient pam_unix.so sha512 rounds=100000