1.328 RHEL-09-611100

Information

RHEL 9 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.

GROUP ID: V-258109
RULE ID: SV-258109r1045220

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. RHEL 9 utilizes "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 RHEL 9 to enforce password complexity by requiring 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 to contain the "ocredit" parameter:

ocredit = -1

See Also

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

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5, 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-001619, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-258109r1045220_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-09-611100, Vuln-ID|V-258109

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 3f068f20a5c90284b11977be3286d64bf8b539c151f50e23482bf85dba8e2fa8