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The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must lock the associated account after three unsuccessful root logon attempts are made within a 15-minute period.

An XCCDF Rule

Description

<VulnDiscussion>By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128, SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>

ID
SV-204428r880845_rule
Severity
Medium
References
Updated



Remediation - Manual Procedure

Configure the operating system to automatically lock the root account, for a minimum of 15 minutes, when three unsuccessful logon attempts in 15 minutes are made.

Modify the first three lines of the auth section and the first line of the account section of the "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" files to match the following lines:

auth        required      pam_faillock.so preauth silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=900
auth        sufficient    pam_unix.so try_first_pass