Detections
Analytics

SRG-OS-000077-ESXI5 - The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.

Information

If a user, or root, used the same password continuously or was allowed to change it back shortly after being forced to change it to something else, it would provide a potential intruder with the opportunity to keep guessing at one user's password until it was guessed correctly.

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Temporarily disable Lockdown Mode and enable the ESXi Shell via the vSphere Client. Open the vSphere/VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client and log in with appropriate credentials. If connecting to vCenter Server, click on the desired host. Click the Configuration tab. Click Software, Security Profile, Services, Properties, ESXi Shell and Options, respectively. Start the ESXi Shell service, where/as required. 'remember' is an option to pam_unix.so.
As root, log in to the host and modify the 'remember' keyword value, example: 'remember=5'.
# vi /etc/pam.d/passwd

Re-enable Lockdown Mode on the host.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_ESXi5_Server_V2R1_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Group-ID|V-39261, Rule-ID|SV-250622r798865_rule, STIG-ID|SRG-OS-000077-ESXI5, STIG-Legacy|SV-51077, STIG-Legacy|V-39261, Vuln-ID|V-250622

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: 6d43781b954e58ad984723a15de5c3243524623c5c1099a1ec5dde255bfb097b