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. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system.

Check

Verify the operating system uses "pwquality" to enforce the password complexity rules.

Check for the use of "pwquality" with the following command:

# cat /etc/pam.d/system-auth | grep pam_pwquality

password requisite pam_pwquality.so retry=3

If the command does not return an uncommented line containing the value "pam_pwquality.so" as shown, this is a finding.

If the value of "retry" is set to "0" or greater than "3", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the operating system to use "pwquality" to enforce password complexity rules.

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

password requisite pam_pwquality.so retry=3

Note: The value of "retry" should be between "1" and "3".