The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured so that passwords are prohibited from reuse for a minimum of five generations.
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. 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 per policy requirements.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-204422r917818_rule
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
Configure the operating system to prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.
Add the following line in "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" (or modify the line to have the required value):
password requisite pam_pwhistory.so remember=5 retry=3