SLEM-05-611075 - SLEM 5 must employ a password history file.

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 SLEM 5 to create the password history file with the following commands:

Create the file:
> sudo touch /etc/security/opasswd

Set ownership permissions:
> sudo chown root:root /etc/security/opasswd

Set access permissions:
> sudo chmod 0600 /etc/security/opasswd

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)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-261390r996595_rule, STIG-ID|SLEM-05-611075, Vuln-ID|V-261390

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 41984a8227897108ad7cd5f5bb8497ad07ea1a3fbfe614df8c2652e16d6288ae