SLEM-05-611025 - SLEM 5 must enforce passwords that contain at least one special character.

Information

Use of a complex password helps 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 in determining 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.

Special characters are not alphanumeric. Examples include: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ *.

Solution

Configure SLEM 5 to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one special character.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "ocredit=-1" after the third column.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLEM_5_V1R3_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-001619, Rule-ID|SV-261380r996572_rule, STIG-ID|SLEM-05-611025, Vuln-ID|V-261380

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: beec461ba81c38f76990d48ca9ca26e98accdd353b034a3c072b79bec4e75e91