Title

The SUSE operating system must employ a password history file. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

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.

Check Content

Verify the password history file exists on the SUSE operating system. Check that the password history file exists with the following command: > ls -al /etc/security/opasswd -rw------- 1 root root 7 Dec 13 17:21 /etc/security/opasswd If "/etc/security/opasswd" does not exist, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the SUSE operating system to create the password history file with the following commands: > sudo touch /etc/security/opasswd > sudo chown root:root /etc/security/opasswd > sudo chmod 0600 /etc/security/opasswd

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-234893r622137_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-234893

Group Title: SRG-OS-000077-GPOS-00045

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.