The system must prevent the use of dictionary words for passwords.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-22307	GEN000790	SV-37318r1_rule	IAIA-1 IAIA-2	Medium

Description
An easily guessable password provides an open door to any external or internal malicious intruder. Many computer compromises occur as the result of account name and password guessing. This is generally done by someone with an automated script that uses repeated logon attempts until the correct account and password pair is guessed. Utilities, such as cracklib, can be used to validate passwords are not dictionary words and meet other criteria during password changes.

Description

An easily guessable password provides an open door to any external or internal malicious intruder. Many computer compromises occur as the result of account name and password guessing. This is generally done by someone with an automated script that uses repeated logon attempts until the correct account and password pair is guessed. Utilities, such as cracklib, can be used to validate passwords are not dictionary words and meet other criteria during password changes.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2014-07-02

Details

Check Text ( None )
None

Fix Text (F-31262r1_fix)
If /etc/pam.d/system-auth references /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac refer to the man page for system-auth-ac for a description of how to add options not configurable with authconfig. Edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth and configure pam_cracklib by adding a line such as "password required pam_cracklib.so"