The system must disable accounts after three consecutive unsuccessful login attempts.

From Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Associated with IA controls: ECLO-1, ECLO-2

Associated with: CCI-000044

SV-37203r1_rule The system must disable accounts after three consecutive unsuccessful login attempts.

Vulnerability discussion

Disabling accounts after a limited number of unsuccessful login attempts improves protection against password guessing attacks.

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Fix text

By default link /etc/pam.d/system-auth points to /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac which is the file maintained by the authconfig utility. In order to add pam options other than those available via the utility create /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local with the options and including system-auth-ac. In order to set the account lockout to three failed attempts the content should be similar to: auth required pam_access.so auth required pam_tally2.so deny=3 auth include system-auth-ac account required pam_tally2.so account include system-auth-ac password include system-auth-ac session include system-auth-ac Once system-auth-local is written reset the /etc/pam.d/system-auth to point to system-auth-local. This is necessary because authconfig writes directly to system-auth-ac so any changes made by hand will be lost if authconfig is run.

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