Vulnerability Discussion

Enabling PAM password complexity permits enforcement of strong passwords and consequently makes the system less prone to dictionary attacks.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037, SRG-OS-000070-GPOS-00038, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227

Check

Verify RHEL 9 uses "pwquality" to enforce the password complexity rules in the password-auth file with the following command:

$ cat /etc/pam.d/password-auth | grep pam_pwquality

password required pam_pwquality.so

If the command does not return a line containing the value "pam_pwquality.so", or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

If the system administrator (SA) can demonstrate that the required configuration is contained in a PAM configuration file included or substacked from the system-auth file, this is not a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 9 to use "pwquality" to enforce password complexity rules.

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

password required pam_pwquality.so