Title

TOSS must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special 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. TOSS utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special 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 "ocredit" in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" with the following command: $ sudo grep ocredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf ocredit = -1 If the value of "ocredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix Text

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

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-253087r991561_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-253087

Group Title: SRG-OS-000266-GPOS-00101

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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