Vulnerability Discussion

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Check

Verify the SUSE operating system enforces a minimum 15-character password length.

Check that the operating system enforces a minimum 15-character password length with the following command:

> grep pam_cracklib.so /etc/pam.d/common-password
password requisite pam_cracklib.so minlen=15

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 "minlen" value, or the value is less than "15", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the SUSE operating system to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "minlen=15" after the third column.

The DOD standard requires a minimum 15-character password length.