SLES-12-010310 - The SUSE operating system must not allow passwords to be reused for a minimum of five (5) generations.

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Information

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system password history to prohibit the reuse of a password for a minimum of five generations.

Edit '/etc/pam.d/common-password' and edit the line containing 'pam_pwhistory.so' to contain the option 'remember=5 use_authtok' after the third column.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_12_V2R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-217133r603262_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-12-010310, STIG-Legacy|SV-91817, STIG-Legacy|V-77121, Vuln-ID|V-217133

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 787d6d75dc5de5b6a763045e5a4afa9cea8f851add1d50642ff1334cd1141ed8