TOSS must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-253087	TOSS-04-040350	SV-253087r991561_rule		Medium

Description
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity or strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. TOSS utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf."

Description

Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity or strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. TOSS utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf."

STIG	Date
Tri-Lab Operating System Stack (TOSS) 4 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2024-05-30

Details

Check Text ( C-56540r824931_chk )
Verify the value for "ocredit" in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" with the following command: $ sudo grep ocredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf ocredit = -1 If the value of "ocredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-56490r824932_fix)
Configure the operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used by setting the "ocredit" option. Add the following line to /etc/security/pwquality.conf (or modify the line to have the required value): ocredit = -1