RHEL 9 must automatically lock the root account until the root account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.

STIG ID: RHEL-09-411080  |  SRG: SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128 | Severity: medium |  CCI: CCI-000044,CCI-002238

Vulnerability Discussion

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, also 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 9 is configured to lock the root account after three unsuccessful logon attempts with the command:

$ grep even_deny_root /etc/security/faillock.conf

even_deny_root

If the "even_deny_root" option is not set, is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 9 to lock out the "root" account after a number of incorrect login attempts using "pam_faillock.so", first enable the feature using the following command:

$ sudo authselect enable-feature with-faillock

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

add or uncomment the following line:
even_deny_root
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