Information
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account.
From 'faillock.conf' man pages: Note that the default directory that 'pam_faillock' uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be re-enabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable, a different tally directory must be set with the 'dir' option.
SELinux, enforcing a targeted policy, will require any non-default tally directory's security context type to match the default directory's security context type. Without updating the security context type, the pam_faillock module will not write failed login attempts to the non-default tally directory.
Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
Solution
Configure OL 8 to allow the use of a non-default faillock tally directory while SELinux enforces a targeted policy.
Create a non-default faillock tally directory (if it does not already exist) with the following example:
$ sudo mkdir /var/log/faillock
Update the /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.local with 'faillog_t' context type for the non-default faillock tally directory with the following command:
$ sudo semanage fcontext -a -t faillog_t '/var/log/faillock(/.*)?'
Next, update the context type of the non-default faillock directory/subdirectories and files with the following command:
$ sudo restorecon -R -v /var/log/faillock