The system must disable accounts after excessive login failures within a 15-minute interval.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-38501	RHEL-06-000357	SV-50302r2_rule		Medium

Description
Locking out user accounts after a number of incorrect attempts within a specific period of time prevents direct password guessing attacks.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2014-06-10

Details

Check Text ( None )
None

Fix Text (F-43448r2_fix)
To configure the system to lock out accounts after a number of incorrect login attempts within a 15-minute interval using "pam_faillock.so": Add the following lines immediately below the "pam_unix.so" statement in the AUTH section of "/etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac": auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900 auth required pam_faillock.so authsucc deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900 Note that any updates made to "/etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac" will be overwritten by the "authconfig" program. The "authconfig" program should not be used.

Fix Text (F-43448r2_fix)

To configure the system to lock out accounts after a number of incorrect login attempts within a 15-minute interval using "pam_faillock.so":

Add the following lines immediately below the "pam_unix.so" statement in the AUTH section of
"/etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac":

auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900

auth required pam_faillock.so authsucc deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900

Note that any updates made to "/etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac" will be overwritten by the "authconfig" program. The "authconfig" program should not be used.