OL 8 passwords must have a minimum of 15 characters.
An XCCDF Rule
Description
<VulnDiscussion>Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password. OL 8 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Configurations are set in the "etc/security/pwquality.conf" file. The "minlen", sometimes noted as minimum length, acts as a "score" of complexity based on the credit components of the "pwquality" module. By setting the credit components to a negative value, not only will those components be required, but they will not count toward the total "score" of "minlen". This will enable "minlen" to require a 15-character minimum.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-248699r858645_rule
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
Configure OL 8 to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.
Add or update the following line in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" file or a configuration file in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/" directory:
minlen = 15