Title

SLEM 5 must enforce passwords that contain at least one uppercase character. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Use of a complex password helps 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.

Check Content

Verify SLEM 5 enforces password complexity by requiring at least one uppercase character with the following command: > grep pam_cracklib.so /etc/pam.d/common-password password requisite pam_cracklib.so ucredit=-1 If the value for "ucredit" is not "-1", if "ucredit" is missing from the line, the second column value different from "requisite", the line is commented out, or the line is missing, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure SLEM 5 to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one uppercase character. Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "ucredit=-1" after the third column.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-261377r996566_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-261377

Group Title: SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037

Expert Comments

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