SLES-15-020250 - The SUSE operating system must not allow passwords to be reused for a minimum of five generations.

Information

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system password history to prohibit the reuse of a password for a minimum of five generations.

Edit '/etc/pam.d/common-password' and edit the line containing 'pam_pwhistory.so' to contain the option 'remember=5 use_authtok' after the third column.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_15_V1R12_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-234894r622137_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-15-020250, Vuln-ID|V-234894

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 984650758191a842bf87ab6eb3011297ecf4fd3a0367069c57201e8f6df0cb72