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-239103r863028_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.

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	2022-09-27

Details

Check Text ( C-42314r863027_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. NOTE: After the fix is implemented, the check will not pass until either a reboot is performed or both files are modified, which happens automatically on reboot.

Check Text ( C-42314r863027_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.

NOTE: After the fix is implemented, the check will not pass until either a reboot is performed or both files are modified, which happens automatically on reboot.

Fix Text (F-42273r816616_fix)
Open /etc/applmgmt/appliance/system-password with a text editor. Comment out any existing "pam_cracklib.so" line and add the following: 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 Save and close.