Vulnerability Discussion

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.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex a password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Check

Verify that OL 9 requires the maximum number of repeating characters be limited to three when passwords are changed.

Verify the value of the "maxrepeat" option in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" with the following command:

$ grep maxrepeat /etc/security/pwquality.conf /etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/*.conf
maxrepeat = 3

If the value of "maxrepeat" is set to more than "3", or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure OL 9 to require the change of the number of repeating consecutive characters when passwords are changed by setting the "maxrepeat" option.

Add the following line to "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" (or modify the line to have the required value):

maxrepeat = 3