Vulnerability Discussion

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account.

RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program.

From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128

Check

Check that the system includes the root account when locking an account after three unsuccessful logon attempts within a period of 15 minutes with the following commands:

Note: If the System Administrator demonstrates the use of an approved centralized account management method that locks an account after three unsuccessful logon attempts within a period of 15 minutes, this requirement is not applicable.

$ sudo grep pam_faillock.so /etc/pam.d/password-auth

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth dir=/var/log/faillock silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=0
auth required pam_faillock.so authfail dir=/var/log/faillock unlock_time=0
account required pam_faillock.so

If the "even_deny_root" option is missing from the "preauth" line with the "pam_faillock.so" module, this is a finding.

$ sudo grep pam_faillock.so /etc/pam.d/system-auth

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth dir=/var/log/faillock silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=0
auth required pam_faillock.so authfail dir=/var/log/faillock unlock_time=0
account required pam_faillock.so

If the "even_deny_root" option is missing from the "preauth" line with the "pam_faillock.so" module, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the operating system to include root when locking an account after three unsuccessful logon attempts occur in 15 minutes.

Add/Modify the appropriate sections of the "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" files to match the following lines:

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth dir=/var/log/faillock silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root fail_interval=900 unlock_time=0
auth required pam_faillock.so authfail dir=/var/log/faillock unlock_time=0
account required pam_faillock.so

The "sssd" service must be restarted for the changes to take effect. To restart the "sssd" service, run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl restart sssd.service