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Global settings defined in common- {account,auth,password,session} must be applied in the pam.d definition files.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-239492 VROM-SL-000345 SV-239492r661927_rule Medium
Description
Pam global requirements are generally defined in the common-account, common-auth, common- password and common-session files located in the /etc/pam.d directory. In order for the requirements to be applied the file(s) containing them must be included directly or indirectly in each program's definition file in /etc/pam.d.
STIG Date
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.x SLES Security Technical Implementation Guide 2021-07-01

Details

Check Text ( C-42725r661925_chk )
Verify that common-{account, auth, password, session} settings are being applied:

Verify that local customization has occurred in the common- {account,auth,password,session}-pc file(s) by some method other than the use of the pam-config utility.

The files "/etc/pam.d/common-{account,auth,password,session} -pc" are autogenerated by "pam-config". Any manual changes made to them will be lost if "pam-config" is allowed to run.

# ls -l /etc/pam.d/common-{account,auth,password,session}

If the symlinks point to "/etc/pam.d/common- {account,auth,password,session}-pc" and manual updates have been made in these files, the updates cannot be protected if pam-config is enabled.

# ls -l /usr/sbin/pam-config

If the setting for pam-config is not "000", this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-42684r661926_fix)
In the default distribution of SLES 11 "/etc/pam.d/common- {account,auth,password,session}" are symlinks to their respective "/etc/pam.d/common- {account,auth,password,session}-pc" files. These common- {account,auth,password,session}-pc files are autogenerated by the pam-config utility.

Edit /usr/sbin/pam-config permissions to prevent its use:

# chmod 000 /usr/sbin/pam-config