SV-258060r1045150: RHEL 9 must ensure account lockouts persist. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

RHEL 9 must ensure account lockouts persist.

Description

Discussion Text

Having lockouts persist across reboots ensures that account is only unlocked by an administrator. If the lockouts did not persist across reboots, an attacker could simply reboot the system to continue brute force attacks against the accounts on the system.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000044

References

DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 DISA DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 5551

Checks

DISA STIG (Manual Reference)

Verify the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file is configured to use a nondefault faillock directory to ensure contents persist after reboot with the following command:

$ sudo grep -w dir /etc/security/faillock.conf

dir = /var/log/faillock

If the "dir" option is not set to a nondefault documented tally log directory or is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

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.rhel9os:def:258060
# RHEL 9 must ensure account lockouts persist.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# /etc/security/faillock.conf: dir = var/log/faillock
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  (sed -En 's/^\s*dir\s*=\s*(\S+)\s*(?:#.*)?$/\1/p' '/etc/security/faillock.conf') | grep -qxF '/var/log/faillock'
}

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.rhel9os:def:258060

if [ ! -f "/etc/security/faillock.conf" ]; then
  echo "PASS"
  exit 0
fi

if grep -q "^\\s*dir\\s*=\\s*/var/log/faillock\\s*(?:#.*)?$" /etc/security/faillock.conf; then
  echo "PASS"
  exit 0
fi

echo "FAIL"
exit 1

Remediation

Configure RHEL 9 maintain the contents of the faillock directory after a reboot.

Add/modify the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file to match the following line:

dir = /var/log/faillock