The SUSE operating system must be configured to not overwrite Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) configuration on package changes.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-235006	SLES-15-040220	SV-235006r622137_rule		Medium

Description
The "pam-config" command line utility automatically generates a system PAM configuration as packages are installed, updated, or removed from the system. "pam-config" removes configurations for PAM modules and parameters that it does not know about. It may render ineffective PAM configuration by the system administrator and thus impact system security.

STIG	Date
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2021-11-30

Details

Check Text ( C-38194r619287_chk )
Verify the SUSE operating system is configured to not overwrite PAM configuration on package changes. Check that soft links between PAM configuration files are removed with the following command: > find /etc/pam.d/ -type l -iname "common-*" If any results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-38157r619288_fix)
Copy the PAM configuration files to their static locations and remove the SUSE operating system soft links for the PAM configuration files with the following command: > sudo sh -c 'for X in /etc/pam.d/common-*-pc; do cp -ivp --remove-destination $X ${X:0:-3}; done' Additional information on the configuration of multifactor authentication on the SUSE operating system can be found at https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/configuring-smart-card-authentication-suse-linux-enterprise/.

Fix Text (F-38157r619288_fix)

Copy the PAM configuration files to their static locations and remove the SUSE operating system soft links for the PAM configuration files with the following command:

> sudo sh -c 'for X in /etc/pam.d/common-*-pc; do cp -ivp --remove-destination $X ${X:0:-3}; done'

Additional information on the configuration of multifactor authentication on the SUSE operating system can be found at https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/configuring-smart-card-authentication-suse-linux-enterprise/.