Detections
Analytics

1.76 SOL-11.1-040040

Information

User passwords must be at least 15 characters in length.

GROUP ID: V-216324
RULE ID: SV-216324r1016270

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks.

Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. The shorter the password is, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

The root role is required.

# pfedit /etc/default/passwd

Locate the line containing:

PASSLENGTH

Change the line to read:

PASSLENGTH=15

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/23765

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-216324r1016270_rule, STIG-ID|SOL-11.1-040040, Vuln-ID|V-216324

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: af947986eb4cc272d9f5b32d873442a8d24f0dfa24062963444549201cffcaa9