SLES-12-010250 - The SUSE operating system must employ passwords with a minimum of 15 characters.

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

Solution

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

Edit '/etc/pam.d/common-password' and edit the line containing 'pam_cracklib.so' to contain the option 'minlen=15' after the third column.

The DoD standard requires a minimum 15-character password length.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_12_V2R13_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, Rule-ID|SV-217127r603262_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-12-010250, STIG-Legacy|SV-91805, STIG-Legacy|V-77109, Vuln-ID|V-217127

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: a3599bd18c10d93b277ff19b826c33a126a787a7b2a257251f35dcfe5938e830