RHEL-07-010290 - The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must not allow accounts configured with blank or null passwords - system-auth

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Information

If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.

Solution

If an account is configured for password authentication but does not have an assigned password, it may be possible to log on to the account without authenticating.

Remove any instances of the 'nullok' option in '/etc/pam.d/system-auth' and '/etc/pam.d/password-auth' to prevent logons with empty passwords.

Note: Manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the 'authconfig' program. The 'authconfig' program should not be used to update the configurations listed in this requirement.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_7_V3R7_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-204424r809187_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-07-010290, STIG-Legacy|SV-86561, STIG-Legacy|V-71937, Vuln-ID|V-204424

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: c9c5cddd274bb0c6b9d079e7aa4a8ca34604fd7d841e76877e216dbac176dfef