5.4.12 Ensure accounts lock for a minimum of 15 minutes after three unsuccessful logon attempts within a 15-minute timeframe - system-auth fail_interval

Information

The operating system must be configured to lock accounts for a minimum of 15 minutes after three unsuccessful logon attempts within a 15-minute timeframe.

Rationale:

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128, SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005

Solution

Configure the operating system to lock an account for the maximum period when three unsuccessful logon attempts in 15 minutes are made.
Add/Modify the appropriate sections of the '/etc/pam.d/system-auth' and '/etc/pam.d/password-auth' files to match the following lines:

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900
auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass
auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900
account required pam_faillock.so

Note: Manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the 'authconfig' program. The 'authconfig' program should not be used to update the configurations listed in this requirement.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3636

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-7a., 800-53|AC-7b., CCI|CCI-000044, CCI|CCI-002236, CCI|CCI-002237, CCI|CCI-002238, CSCv6|16.7, CSCv7|16.7, Rule-ID|SV-204427r603824_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-07-010320

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 0bb2a8d1e27262821b2b9819eaa5212c59e3ea9d27773eaf7f5561526a71eb1b