Detections
Analytics

GEN000585-ESXI5-000080 - The system must enforce the entire password during authentication.

Information

Some common password hashing schemes only process the first eight characters of a user's password, which reduces the effective strength of the password.

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. As root, log in to the host and verify the expected settings are configured in the /etc/pam.d/passwd file. The entry format is 'password requisite /lib/security/pam_passwdqc.so similar=deny retry=N min=N0,N1,N2,N3,N4'. The 'N4' field controls the behavior requiring at least one character each of the 4 different character classes, with a minimum required length of 14 characters.

# vi /etc/pam.d/passwd

Set the 'N4' password complexity field to '14' and set the 'N0' thru 'N3' fields to 'disabled'.

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: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000366, Group-ID|V-39263, Rule-ID|SV-250572r798715_rule, STIG-ID|GEN000585-ESXI5-000080, STIG-Legacy|SV-51079, STIG-Legacy|V-39263, Vuln-ID|V-250572

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: 9b053b39a6ec75acc264b09d9ecdcdbcfcec136794da6f746b2d1806b4dc3a5b