The SUSE operating system must employ a password history file.

STIG ID: SLES-15-020240 |  SRG: SRG-OS-000077-GPOS-00045 |  Severity: medium |  CCI:  | Vulnerability Id: V-234893

Vulnerability Discussion

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

Check

Configure the SUSE operating system to create the password history file with the following commands:

> sudo touch /etc/security/opasswd
> sudo chown root:root /etc/security/opasswd
> sudo chmod 0600 /etc/security/opasswd

Fix

Verify the password history file exists on the SUSE operating system.

Check that the password history file exists with the following command:

> ls -al /etc/security/opasswd

-rw------- 1 root root 7 Dec 13 17:21 /etc/security/opasswd

If "/etc/security/opasswd" does not exist, this is a finding.