RHEL-08-020130 - RHEL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used.

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Information

Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

RHEL 8 utilizes 'pwquality' as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require numeric characters, without degrading the minlen value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in '/etc/security/pwquality.conf'.

Solution

Configure the operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used by setting the 'dcredit' option.

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

dcredit = -1

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-000194, Rule-ID|SV-230359r858775_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-08-020130, Vuln-ID|V-230359

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: c14e0abfc220082d2b36e5435b445b328071ed4ef56f82fc87b771a1d8994e63