1.280 RHEL-09-411080

Information

RHEL 9 must automatically lock the root account until the root account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.

GROUP ID: V-258055
RULE ID: SV-258055r1045140

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, also 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

To configure RHEL 9 to lock out the "root" account after a number of incorrect logon attempts using "pam_faillock.so", first enable the feature using the following command:

$ sudo authselect enable-feature with-faillock

Edit the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" by uncommenting or adding the following line:

even_deny_root

See Also

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

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-7a., 800-53|AC-7b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000044, CCI|CCI-002238, Rule-ID|SV-258055r1045140_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-09-411080, Vuln-ID|V-258055

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 8d0a2fb425597b1ae536a13341f37a5c091b507aa029d59d7eff99136261f475