GEN000480 - The delay between login prompts following a failed login attempt must be at least 4 seconds.

Information

Enforcing a delay between successive failed login attempts increases protection against automated password guessing attacks.

Solution

Add the pam_faildelay module and set the FAIL_DELAY variable.

Procedure:

Edit /etc/login.defs and set the value of the FAIL_DELAY variable to 4 or more.

The default link /etc/pam.d/system-auth points to /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac which is the file maintained by the authconfig utility. In order to add pam options other than those available via the utility create or modify /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local with the options and including system-auth-ac. For example:

auth required pam_access.so
auth optional pam_faildelay.so delay=4000000
auth include system-auth-ac
account include system-auth-ac
password include system-auth-ac
session include system-auth-ac

Once system-auth-local is written ensure the /etc/pam.d/system-auth points to system-auth-local. This is necessary because authconfig writes directly to system-auth-ac so any manual changes made will be lost if authconfig is run.

See Also

http://iasecontent.disa.mil/stigs/zip/U_RedHat_5_V1R18_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-7b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-002238, Group-ID|V-768, Rule-ID|SV-37213r2_rule, STIG-ID|GEN000480, Vuln-ID|V-768

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 24dfc1bbeddeaafd8efc53f6efb8d3faa79a9672ade9865b4886ff7abffd7b29