OL08-00-020230 - OL 8 passwords must have a minimum of 15 characters.

Information

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

OL 8 uses 'pwquality' as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Configurations are set in the 'etc/security/pwquality.conf' file.

The 'minlen', sometimes noted as minimum length, acts as a 'score' of complexity based on the credit components of the 'pwquality' module. By setting the credit components to a negative value, not only will those components be required, but they will not count toward the total 'score' of 'minlen'. This will enable 'minlen' to require a 15-character minimum.

Solution

Configure OL 8 to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

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:

minlen = 15

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_V2R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-248699r1015058_rule, STIG-ID|OL08-00-020230, Vuln-ID|V-248699

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 49a1c1f132c90d02560c55f51754482d001e72af7bbabd6b4f2f9926074c3995