STIG ID: OL07-00-010119 | SRG: SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037 | Severity: medium | CCI: | Vulnerability Id: V-221668
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.
Satisfied: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00229, SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037
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 required pam_pwquality.so retry=3
Note: The value of "retry" should be between "1" and "3".
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 required pam_pwquality.so retry=3
If the command does not return an uncommented line containing the value "pam_pwquality.so", this is a finding.
If the value of "retry" is set to "0" or greater than "3", this is a finding.