1.314 RHEL-09-611025

Information

RHEL 9 must not allow blank or null passwords.

GROUP ID: V-258094
RULE ID: SV-258094r1045187

If an account has an empty password, anyone could log in and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.

Solution

If PAM is managed with authselect, use the following command to remove instances of "nullok":

$ sudo authselect enable-feature without-nullok

Otherwise, remove any instances of the "nullok" option in the "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" files to prevent logons with empty passwords.

Note: Manual changes to the listed file may be overwritten by the "authselect" program.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/22008

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-258094r1045187_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-09-611025, Vuln-ID|V-258094

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 9a04d90e992ac715592b88e8bc9f91102b80afbd8c7ea4295fab7f4c918ce077