RHEL-06-000057 - The system must require passwords to contain at least one uppercase alphabetic character - password-auth.

Information

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

Solution

The pam_cracklib module's 'ucredit=' parameter controls requirements for usage of uppercase letters in a password. When set to a negative number, any password will be required to contain that many uppercase characters. When set to a positive number, pam_cracklib will grant +1 additional length credit for each uppercase character.

Edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth and /etc/pam.d/password-auth adding 'ucredit=-1' after pam_cracklib.so to require use of an uppercase character in passwords.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_6_V2R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|III, CCI|CCI-000192, Rule-ID|SV-217893r603264_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-06-000057, STIG-Legacy|SV-50370, STIG-Legacy|V-38569, Vuln-ID|V-217893

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: ec3068bbee7bcafec631c110a205b75b02d0ab96e56fb2d5ecedb6154df1fe4c