RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
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-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-230332r627750_rule
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
Configure the operating system to lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Add/Modify the appropriate sections 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 dir=/var/log/faillock silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=0
auth required pam_faillock.so authfail dir=/var/log/faillock unlock_time=0