OL08-00-020110 - OL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one uppercase character be used.

Information

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.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

OL 8 uses pwquality as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require uppercase characters without degrading the 'minlen' value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in '/etc/security/pwquality.conf'.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037, SRG-OS-000070-GPOS-00038

Solution

Configure OL 8 to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one uppercase character be used by setting the 'ucredit' option.

Add or update the following line in the '/etc/security/pwquality.conf' file or a configuration file in the '/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/' directory:

ucredit = -1

Remove any configurations that conflict with the above value.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Oracle_Linux_8_V2R1_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|III, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-248687r986351_rule, STIG-ID|OL08-00-020110, Vuln-ID|V-248687

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: bc62d0fd3de2a10f4a8c3f3a07c8d706f348cf57d8cb8d32a6e5afed743e42d5