PHTN-40-000086 The Photon operating system must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.

Information

Use of a complex password helps to 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 in determining 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.

Special characters are those characters that are not alphanumeric. Examples include: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ *.

Solution

Navigate to and open:

/etc/pam.d/system-password

Configure the pam_pwquality.so line to have the "ocredit" option set to "-1" as follows:

password requisite pam_pwquality.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=15 difok=8 enforce_for_root dictcheck=1

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_8-0_Y24M08_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-004066, Rule-ID|SV-258838r1003642_rule, STIG-ID|PHTN-40-000086, Vuln-ID|V-258838

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 9811669d10b766539d9e25674271992b114177c5aef582fc8fb56a1a8acb8ef4