The system must disable accounts after excessive login failures within a 15-minute interval.

From Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Associated with: CCI-001452

SV-50302r4_rule The system must disable accounts after excessive login failures within a 15-minute interval.

Vulnerability discussion

Locking out user accounts after a number of incorrect attempts within a specific period of time prevents direct password guessing attacks.

Check content

To ensure the failed password attempt policy is configured correctly, run the following command: $ grep pam_faillock /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/password-auth For each file, the output should show "fail_interval=" where "interval-in-seconds" is 900 (15 minutes) or greater. If the "fail_interval" parameter is not set, the default setting of 900 seconds is acceptable. If that is not the case, this is a finding.

Fix text

Utilizing "pam_faillock.so", the "fail_interval" directive configures the system to lock out accounts after a number of incorrect logon attempts. Modify the content of both "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" as follows: Add the following line immediately before the "pam_unix.so" statement in the "AUTH" section: auth required pam_faillock.so preauth silent deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900 Add the following line immediately after the "pam_unix.so" statement in the "AUTH" section: auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail deny=3 unlock_time=604800 fail_interval=900 Add the following line immediately before the "pam_unix.so" statement in the "ACCOUNT" section: account required pam_faillock.so Note that any updates made to "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" may be overwritten by the "authconfig" program. The "authconfig" program should not be used.

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