DISA STIGS Viewer

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-271633	OL09-00-001105	SV-271633r1091611_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 increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password. OL 9 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Configurations are set in the "etc/security/pwquality.conf" file. The "minlen", sometimes noted as minimum length, acts as a "score" of complexity based on the credit components of the "pwquality" module. By setting the credit components to a negative value, not only will those components be required, but they will not count toward the total "score" of "minlen". This will enable "minlen" to require a 15-character minimum. The DOD minimum password requirement is 15 characters.

STIG	Date
Oracle Linux 9 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2025-05-08

Check Text (C-75683r1091609_chk)

Verify that OL 9 enforces a minimum 15-character password length with the following command: $ grep minlen /etc/security/pwquality.conf /etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/*.conf minlen = 15 If the command does not return a "minlen" value of "15" or greater, does not return a line, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-75590r1091610_fix)

Configure OL 9 to enforce a minimum 15-character password length. Add the following line to "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" (or modify the line to have the required value): minlen = 15