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RHEL-07-010270 - The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured so that passwords are prohibited from reuse for a minimum of five generations.
Information
Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed per policy requirements.Solution
Configure the operating system to prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.Add the following line in '/etc/pam.d/system-auth' (or modify the line to have the required value):
password requisite pam_pwhistory.so remember=5 retry=3
Add the following line in '/etc/pam.d/password-auth' (or modify the line to have the required value):
password requisite pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3
Note: Per requirement RHEL-07-010199, RHEL 7 must be configured to not overwrite custom authentication configuration settings while using the authconfig utility; otherwise, manual changes to the listed files will be overwritten whenever the authconfig utility is used.
See Also
https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_7_V3R15_STIG.zip
Item Details
Audit Name: DISA Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 STIG v3r15
Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION
References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-204422r982201_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-07-010270, STIG-Legacy|SV-86557, STIG-Legacy|V-71933, Vuln-ID|V-204422
Plugin: Unix
Control ID: b2f5f20f4d7d73798e172d7c0acaa412ba43b17520c974da0ead824d4bfc8e55