SV-271636r1091620: OL 9 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used. | Oracle Linux 9 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

OL 9 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.

Description

Discussion Text

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 the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. OL 9 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".

How this relates to the STIG checklist: STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-004066

References

DPMS Target Oracle Linux 9 DISA DPMS Target Oracle Linux 9 5680

SCC Automation Reference

The reconstructed evaluation script behind this rule's OVAL check(s) — every module a compound check combines, with this rule's own concrete values and DISA's SCC tool's real per-module mechanism curated from static teardown of SCC releases.

#!/bin/bash
# Reconstructed from oval:mil.disa.stig.ol9os:def:271636
# OL 9 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# Passwords contain at least one special character
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  ( [ "$(sed -En 's/^\s*ocredit\s*=\s*(-?\d*)\s*(?:#.*)?$/\1/p' '/etc/security/pwquality.conf')" -lt 0 ] ) || ( [ "$(grep -rhP --include='*.conf' '^\s*ocredit\s*=\s*(-?\d*)\s*(?:#.*)?$' '/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d' | sed -En 's/^\s*ocredit\s*=\s*(-?\d*)\s*(?:#.*)?$/\1/p')" -lt 0 ] )
}

if test_1; then
  echo "PASS"
else
  echo "FAIL"
fi

Assessment Script Powered by AISandbox-executed

A standalone Shell script to assess this control automatically. Review before running it in your environment.

Syntax-checked and actually executed in an isolated sandbox (not the real system this checks) — confirmed to run without errors.

#!/bin/sh
# OVAL Definition: oval:mil.disa.stig.ol9os:def:271636
if [ ! -f "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
if grep -qE "^\\s*ocredit\\s*=\\s*(-?\\d*)\\s*(?:#.*)?$" /etc/security/pwquality.conf && awk -F'=' '$1~/^ocredit$/{if($2 ~ /^[0-9]*$/){print $2}else{print "-1"}}' /etc/security/pwquality.conf | grep -qE "^-?[0-9]*$" && echo $(grep -cE "^\\s*ocredit\\s*=\\s*(-?\\d*)\\s*(?:#.*)?$" /etc/security/pwquality.conf); then
    if [ $(echo "$?") -ge 1 ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
fi
echo "FAIL"; exit 1

Remediation

Configure OL 9 to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one special character be used by setting the "ocredit" option.

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

ocredit = -1