Skip to content

NixOS must enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

An XCCDF Rule

Description

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

ID
SV-268134r1039290_rule
Version
ANIX-00-000810
Severity
Medium
References
Updated

Remediation Templates

A Manual Procedure

Configure NixOS to enforce password complexity. 

Add/modify /etc/nixos/configuration.nix to include the following lines:

environment.etc."/security/pwquality.conf".text = ''
minlen=15