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RHEL 8 must configure the use of the pam_faillock.so module in the /etc/pam.d/password-auth file.

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. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" 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. The preauth argument must be used when the module is called before the modules which ask for the user credentials such as the password. 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-244534r743851_rule
Severity
Medium
References
Updated



Remediation - Manual Procedure

Configure the operating system to include the use of the pam_faillock.so module in the /etc/pam.d/password-auth file.

Add/Modify the appropriate sections of the "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" file to match the following lines:
Note: The "preauth" line must be listed before pam_unix.so.

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth