1.172 OL08-00-020120

Information

OL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one lowercase character be used.

GROUP ID: V-248688
RULE ID: SV-248688r1015048

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.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines 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.

OL 8 uses pwquality as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require lowercase characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".

Solution

Configure OL 8 to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one lowercase character be used by setting the "lcredit" option.

Add or update the following line in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" file or a configuration file in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/" directory:

lcredit = -1

Remove any configurations that conflict with the above value.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/23791

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|III, CCI|CCI-000193, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-248688r1015048_rule, STIG-ID|OL08-00-020120, Vuln-ID|V-248688

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: dce0a62c09092522abdac694bea4f4e7ff543d00fbc379f3f67ed736b81afd77