The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.

From Oracle Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Part of GEN000800

Associated with: CCI-000200

SV-64321r2_rule The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.

Vulnerability discussion

If a user, or root, used the same password continuously or was allowed to change it back shortly after being forced to change it to something else, it would provide a potential intruder with the opportunity to keep guessing at one user's password until it was guessed correctly.

Check content

# ls /etc/security/opasswd If /etc/security/opasswd does not exist, then this is a finding. # grep password /etc/pam.d/system-auth| egrep '(pam_pwhistory.so|pam_unix.so|pam_cracklib.so)' | grep remember If the "remember" option in /etc/pam.d/system-auth is not 5 or greater, this is a finding. Check for system-auth-ac inclusions. # grep -c system-auth-ac /etc/pam.d/* If the system-auth-ac file is included anywhere # more /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac | grep password | egrep '(pam_pwhistory.so|pam_unix.so|pam_cracklib.so)' | grep remember If in /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac is referenced by another file and the "remember" option is not set to 5 or greater this is a finding.

Fix text

Create the password history file. # touch /etc/security/opasswd # chown root:root /etc/security/opasswd # chmod 0600 /etc/security/opasswd Enable password history. If /etc/pam.d/system-auth references /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac refer to the man page for system-auth-ac for a description of how to add options not configurable with authconfig. Edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth to include the remember option on any "password pam_unix" or "password pam_pwhistory" lines set to at least 5.

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