SLES-12-010170 - The SUSE operating system must enforce passwords that contain at least one numeric character.

Information

Use of a complex password helps 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.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one numeric character.

Edit '/etc/pam.d/common-password' and edit the line containing 'pam_cracklib.so' to contain the option 'dcredit=-1' after the third column.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_12_V2R13_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000194, Rule-ID|SV-217119r603262_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-12-010170, STIG-Legacy|SV-91775, STIG-Legacy|V-77079, Vuln-ID|V-217119

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: fa319e3a724e3a9ba12ed21849cb0ced6a9e0ec6a6ad90759a8ad1928ef1e6e6