Title

RHEL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Use of a complex password helps to 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 of several that determines 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. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require numeric characters, without degrading the minlen value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".

Check Content

Verify the value for "dcredit" with the following command: $ sudo grep -r dcredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf* /etc/security/pwquality.conf:dcredit = -1 If the value of "dcredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding. If conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used by setting the "dcredit" option. Add the following line to /etc/security/pwquality.conf (or modify the line to have the required value): dcredit = -1 Remove any configurations that conflict with the above value.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-230359r1017171_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-230359

Group Title: SRG-OS-000071-GPOS-00039

Expert Comments

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