Vulnerability Discussion

Use of a complex password helps 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.

Password complexity is one factor in determining how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Special characters are not alphanumeric. Examples include: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ *.

Check

Verify the SUSE operating system enforces password complexity by requiring at least one special character.

Check that the operating system enforces password complexity by requiring at least one special character using the following command:

> grep pam_cracklib.so /etc/pam.d/common-password
password requisite pam_cracklib.so ocredit=-1

If the command does not return anything, the returned line is commented out, or has a second column value different from "requisite", or does not contain "ocredit=-1", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the SUSE operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one special character.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "ocredit=-1" after the third column.