OL08-00-020130 - OL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric 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 numeric characters without degrading the minlen value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in '/etc/security/pwquality.conf'.

Solution

Configure OL 8 to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used by setting the 'dcredit' 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:

dcredit = -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-248689r986353_rule, STIG-ID|OL08-00-020130, Vuln-ID|V-248689

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: a38870a92b02dffa303ebb5ab1cdd52f7aef827735f441a867e39b3a208eae0c