Detections
Analytics

1.100 SLES-15-020270

Information

The SUSE operating system must enforce passwords that contain at least one special character.

GROUP ID: V-234896
RULE ID: SV-234896r1009633

Use of a complex password helps 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 in determining 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.

Special characters are not alphanumeric. Examples include: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ *.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one special character.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "ocredit=-1" after the third column.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/23779

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-001619, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-234896r1009633_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-15-020270, Vuln-ID|V-234896

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 2208d3e93e04ea6a48709d21b66f7e2bcd8af6f21cc0789c66a814dbc9b10bd1