Detections
Analytics

1.69 SLES-15-020010

Information

The SUSE operating system must lock an account after three consecutive invalid access attempts.

GROUP ID: V-234867
RULE ID: SV-234867r958388

By limiting the number of failed access 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.

The pam_tally2.so module maintains a count of attempted accesses. This includes user name entry into a logon field as well as password entry. With counting access attempts, it is possible to lock an account without presenting a password into the password field. This should be taken into consideration as it poses as an avenue for denial of service.

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

Solution

Configure the operating system to lock an account when three unsuccessful access attempts occur.

Modify the first line of the auth section "/etc/pam.d/common-auth" file to match the following lines:

auth required pam_tally2.so onerr=fail silent audit deny=3

Add or modify the following line in the /etc/pam.d/common-account file:

account required pam_tally2.so

Note : Manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "pam-config" program. The "pam-config" program should not be used to update the configurations listed in this requirement.

See Also

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

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-234867r958388_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-15-020010, Vuln-ID|V-234867

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: ea81b11e04705a559a8ead3b5eefa603f9bc6fc9bcb342eb35a66b8df6b6cf0d