SLES-12-010190 - The SUSE operating system must require the change of at least eight (8) of the total number of characters when passwords are changed.

Information

If the SUSE operating system allows the user to consecutively reuse extensive portions of passwords, this increases the chances of password compromise by increasing the window of opportunity for attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.

The number of changed characters refers to the number of changes required with respect to the total number of positions in the current password. In other words, characters may be the same within the two passwords; however, the positions of the like characters must be different.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system to require at least eight characters be changed between the old and new passwords during a password change with the following command:

Edit '/etc/pam.d/common-password' and edit the line containing 'pam_cracklib.so' to contain the option 'difok=8' after the third column.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_12_V2R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000195, Rule-ID|SV-217121r603262_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-12-010190, STIG-Legacy|SV-91783, STIG-Legacy|V-77087, Vuln-ID|V-217121

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 2b9393db5848053c09e6e430ca2bcdb7ee4656a69e40cc7fe8fd49566f471e1a