Detections
Analytics

1.192 OL08-00-020280

Information

All OL 8 passwords must contain at least one special character.

GROUP ID: V-248709
RULE ID: SV-248709r1015063

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 to require special 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 special character be used by setting the "ocredit" 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:

ocredit = -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-001619, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-248709r1015063_rule, STIG-ID|OL08-00-020280, Vuln-ID|V-248709

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: d16762fa28a22d9d8c2d3639591b120af6d570473e0ce0208a335272a9fdb784