PHTN-30-000029 - The Photon operating system must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

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 result is a password that is not changed per policy requirements.

Solution

Navigate to and open:

/etc/pam.d/system-password

Add the following line after the 'password requisite pam_cracklib.so' statement:

password requisite pam_pwhistory.so enforce_for_root use_authtok remember=5 retry=3

Note: On vCenter appliances, the equivalent file must be edited under '/etc/applmgmt/appliance', if one exists, for the changes to persist after a reboot.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_7-0_Y24M01_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(e), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000200, Rule-ID|SV-256506r887192_rule, STIG-ID|PHTN-30-000029, Vuln-ID|V-256506

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 2fe5195577fbf3ad3cd84397a7c5c2406656ad68b1ba8e9260c4a1f47748493c