5.3.3.3.1 Ensure password history remember is configured

Information

The /etc/security/opasswd file stores the users' old passwords and can be checked to ensure that users are not recycling recent passwords. The number of passwords remembered is set via the remember argument value in set for the pam_pwhistory module.

- remember=<N> - <N> is the number of old passwords to remember

Requiring users not to reuse their passwords make it less likely that an attacker will be able to guess the password or use a compromised password.

Note: These change only apply to accounts configured on the local system.

Solution

Edit or add the following line in /etc/security/pwhistory.conf :

remember = 24

Run the following script to remove the remember argument from the pam_pwhistory.so module in /etc/pam.d/system-auth and /etc/pam.d/password-auth :

#!/usr/bin/env bash

{
for l_pam_file in system-auth password-auth; do
l_authselect_file="/etc/authselect/$(head -1 /etc/authselect/authselect.conf | grep 'custom/')/$l_pam_file"
sed -ri 's/(^s*passwords+(requisite|required|sufficient)s+pam_pwhistory.so.*)(s+remembers*=s*S+)(.*$)/14/' "$l_authselect_file"
done
authselect apply-changes
}

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/18209

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CSCv7|4.4

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: f62baade497a3b3da92a8dd8cf57feb5a6f13d8567907560c709a4d2b1b9e255