TOSS must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-253068	TOSS-04-040130	SV-253068r824876_rule		Medium

Description
Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

STIG	Date
Tri-Lab Operating System Stack (TOSS) 4 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2022-08-29

Details

Check Text ( C-56521r824874_chk )
Verify TOSS prohibits password reuse for a minimum of five generations. Check for the value of the "remember" argument in "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" with the following command: $ sudo grep -i remember /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth:password required pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3 /etc/pam.d/password-auth:password required pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3 If either file is missing "pam_pwhistory.so" and does not have the "remember" module argument set, is commented out, or the value of the "remember" module argument is set to less than "5", this is a finding.

Check Text ( C-56521r824874_chk )

Verify TOSS prohibits password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

Check for the value of the "remember" argument in "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" with the following command:

$ sudo grep -i remember /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/password-auth

/etc/pam.d/system-auth:password required pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3
/etc/pam.d/password-auth:password required pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3

If either file is missing "pam_pwhistory.so" and does not have the "remember" module argument set, is commented out, or the value of the "remember" module argument is set to less than "5", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-56471r824875_fix)
Configure TOSS to prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations. Add the following line in "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" (or modify the line to have the required value): password required pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=5 retry=3