SV-37323r3: The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

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

Description

Discussion Text

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.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000200CCE-14939-3

Additional Details

Responsibility

System Administrator

References

DPMS Target Red Hat 5 DISA DPMS Target Red Hat 5 2154

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.fso.rhel11:def:68
# The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.
#
# MANUAL REVIEW REQUIRED -- the module(s) below could not be reconstructed
# into working code from curated SCC reference data, and are excluded from
# the automated result:
#   - textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test) -- check that remember is set appropriately in /etc/pam.d/system-auth: no extractor for field "subexpression"

# check that /etc/security/opasswd exists
# file_object (file_test)
test_1() {
  test -e '/etc/security/opasswd' &>/dev/null
}

if test_1; then
  echo "PASS (automated portion only -- MANUAL REVIEW still required, see notes above)"
else
  echo "FAIL (or see MANUAL REVIEW note above)"
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.fso.rhel11:def:68
if [ ! -f "/etc/security/opasswd" ]; then echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi
if ! grep -qE '^\\s*password\\s+(?:required|requisite|sufficient)\\s+(?:/[^\\s#]+)?(?:pam_unix|pam_pwhistory|pam_cracklib)\\.so.*\\s+remember=[5-9][0-9]*\\s*$' /etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth-ac /etc/pam.d/system-auth-local ]; then echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi
echo "PASS"; exit 0

Remediation

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_history" lines set to at least 5.