Detections
Analytics

1.99 SLES-15-020260

Information

The SUSE operating system must employ passwords with a minimum of 15 characters.

GROUP ID: V-234895
RULE ID: SV-234895r1009632

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "minlen=15" after the third column.

The DOD standard requires a minimum 15-character password length.

See Also

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

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-234895r1009632_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-15-020260, Vuln-ID|V-234895

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 2782be6787563185c135504dca663ef83f2c8f93296d52a2702c8a0d55c13cbd