PHTN-67-000029 - The Photon operating system must prohibit password reuse 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

Open /etc/applmgmt/appliance/system-password with a text editor.

Add the following line after the last auth statement:

password required pam_pwhistory.so enforce_for_root use_authtok remember=5 retry=3

Save and close.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_6-7_Y23M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-239101r816615_rule, STIG-ID|PHTN-67-000029, Vuln-ID|V-239101

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 2edc37394edcdca0b958ad0202ee68d58c50001ad86048c93d95c33ecf413ced