Vulnerability Discussion

When using the authconfig utility to modify authentication configuration settings, the "system-auth" and "password-auth" files and any custom settings that they may contain are overwritten. This can be avoided by creating new local configuration files and creating new or moving existing symbolic links to them. The authconfig utility will recognize the local configuration files and not overwrite them, while writing its own settings to the original configuration files.

Check

Verify "system-auth" and "password-auth" files are symbolic links pointing to "system-auth-local" and "password-auth-local":
$ sudo ls -l /etc/pam.d/{password,system}-auth

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 30 Apr 1 11:59 /etc/pam.d/password-auth -> /etc/pam.d/password-auth-local
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 28 Apr 1 11:59 /etc/pam.d/system-auth -> /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local

If system-auth and password-auth files are not symbolic links, this is a finding.

If system-auth and password-auth are symbolic links but do not point to "system-auth-local" and "password-auth-local", this is a finding.

Fix

Create custom configuration files and their corresponding symbolic links:

Rename the existing configuration files (skip this step if symbolic links are already present):
$ sudo mv /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac
$ sudo mv /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/password-auth-ac

Create custom system-auth configuration file:
$ sudo vi /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local

The new file, at minimum, must contain the following lines:

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900
auth include system-auth-ac
auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass
auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900

account required pam_faillock.so
account include system-auth-ac

password requisite pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3
password requisite pam_pwquality.so retry=3
password include system-auth-ac
password sufficient pam_unix.so sha512 shadow try_first_pass use_authtok

session include system-auth-ac

Create custom password-auth configuration file:
$ sudo vi /etc/pam.d/password-auth-local

The new file, at minimum, must contain the following lines:

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900
auth include password-auth-ac
auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass
auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900

account required pam_faillock.so
account include password-auth-ac

password requisite pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3
password requisite pam_pwquality.so retry=3
password include password-auth-ac
password sufficient pam_unix.so sha512 shadow try_first_pass use_authtok

session include password-auth-ac

Create new or move existing symbolic links to the new custom configuration files:
$ sudo ln -sf /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local /etc/pam.d/system-auth
$ sudo ln -sf /etc/pam.d/password-auth-local /etc/pam.d/password-auth

Once finished, the following file structure should be present:
$ sudo ls -1 /etc/pam.d/{password,system}-auth*

/etc/pam.d/password-auth
/etc/pam.d/password-auth-ac
/etc/pam.d/password-auth-local
/etc/pam.d/system-auth
/etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac
/etc/pam.d/system-auth-local

Note: With this solution in place any custom settings to "system-auth" and "password-auth" will be retained and not overwritten by the use of the authconfig utility. The authconfig utility will write its settings to "system-auth-ac" and "password-auth-ac" and continue to function as expected.