OL6-00-000059 - The system must require passwords to contain at least one lower-case alphabetic character - password-auth

Information

Requiring a minimum number of lowercase characters makes password guessing attacks more difficult by ensuring a larger search space.

Solution

The pam_cracklib module's 'lcredit=' parameter controls requirements for usage of lower-case letters in a password. When set to a negative number, any password will be required to contain that many lower-case characters.

Edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth and /etc/pam.d/password-auth adding 'lcredit=-1' after pam_cracklib.so to require use of a lower-case character in passwords.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Oracle_Linux_6_V2R7_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|III, CCI|CCI-000193, Rule-ID|SV-208834r793619_rule, STIG-ID|OL6-00-000059, STIG-Legacy|SV-65123, STIG-Legacy|V-50917, Vuln-ID|V-208834

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 71c88175a9fea37077a996a5e2447031b7a30c1707d564897ffa321bffd4cd4a