RHEL-08-020230 - RHEL 8 passwords must have a minimum of 15 characters.

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Information

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 to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

RHEL 8 utilizes 'pwquality' as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Configurations are set in the 'etc/security/pwquality.conf' file.

The 'minlen', sometimes noted as minimum length, acts as a 'score' of complexity based on the credit components of the 'pwquality' module. By setting the credit components to a negative value, not only will those components be required, they will not count towards the total 'score' of 'minlen'. This will enable 'minlen' to require a 15-character minimum.

The DoD minimum password requirement is 15 characters.

Solution

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

Add the following line to '/etc/security/pwquality.conf' (or modify the line to have the required value):

minlen = 15

Remove any configurations that conflict with the above value.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_8_V1R13_STIG.zip

Item Details

References: CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, Rule-ID|SV-230369r858785_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-08-020230, Vuln-ID|V-230369

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 6947a115950a11976c2aa9dc18f12358d79750066f9cdebc93bd4938f3b676af