RHEL 9 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.
An XCCDF Rule
Description
<VulnDiscussion>Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 9 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-258109r926314_rule
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
Configure RHEL 9 to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one special character be used by setting the "ocredit" option.
Add the following line to "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" (or modify the line to have the required value):
ocredit = -1