V-251716

Discussion

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. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth By limiting the number of attempts to meet the pwquality module complexity requirements before returning with an error, the system will audit abnormal attempts at password changes.

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Note: This requirement applies to RHEL versions 8.4 or newer. If the system is RHEL below version 8.4, this requirement is not applicable.

Verify RHEL 8 is configured to limit the "pwquality" retry option to "3".

Check for the use of the retry option in the security directory with the following command:

$ grep -w retry /etc/security/pwquality.conf /etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/*.conf

retry = 3

If the value of "retry" is set to "0" or greater than "3", or is missing, this is a finding.