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The Photon operating system must enforce a minimum eight-character password length.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-239103 PHTN-67-000031 SV-239103r675117_rule Medium
Description
The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.
STIG Date
VMware vSphere 6.7 Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide 2021-04-15

Details

Check Text ( C-42314r675115_chk )
At the command line, execute the following command:

# grep pam_cracklib /etc/pam.d/system-password|grep --color=always "minlen=.."

Expected result:

password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=8 minclass=4 difok=4 retry=3 maxsequence=0 enforce_for_root

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-42273r675116_fix)
Open /etc/pam.d/system-password with a text editor.

Add the following, replacing any existing "pam_cracklib.so" line:

password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=8 minclass=4 difok=4 retry=3 maxsequence=0 enforce_for_root