SV-252957r958736: TOSS must automatically lock an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts in 15 minutes occur. | Tri-Lab Operating System Stack (TOSS) 4 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

TOSS must automatically lock an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts in 15 minutes occur.

Description

Discussion Text

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. Due to the scale of HPC systems and the number of users in question, it is impractical to require an administrator to unlock the user's account manually. Strong controls around automatic lock out, and typical (though not universal) use of strong MFA to enter an HPC system mitigate the concerns of a brute force attack being successful.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-002238

References

DPMS Target TOSS 4 DISA DPMS Target TOSS 4 5469

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.toss4os:def:252957
# TOSS must automatically lock an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts in 15 minutes occur.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# pam_faillock.so is present in system-auth
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  grep -Pq '^\s*(?:auth|account)\s+required\s+pam_faillock\.so(?:[ \t]+.*)?$' '/etc/pam.d/system-auth' &>/dev/null
}
# pam_faillock.so is present in password-auth
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_2() {
  grep -Pq '^\s*(?:auth|account)\s+required\s+pam_faillock\.so(?:[ \t]+.*)?$' '/etc/pam.d/password-auth' &>/dev/null
}
# unlock_time is set to 0 in /etc/security/faillock.conf
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_3() {
  [ "$(sed -En 's/^\s*unlock_time\s*=\s*([\d]+)\s*$/\1/p' '/etc/security/faillock.conf')" -eq 0 ]
}

if ( test_1 && test_2 && test_3 ); 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:mil.disa.stig.toss4os:def:252957

if grep -q "^\\s*(?:auth|account)\\s+required\\s+pam_faillock\\.so" /etc/pam.d/system-auth && \
   grep -q "^\\s*(?:auth|account)\\s+required\\s+pam_faillock\\.so" /etc/pam.d/password-auth && \
   grep -q "^\\s*unlock_time\\s*=\\s*0\\s*$" /etc/security/faillock.conf; then
   echo "PASS"
   exit 0
else
   echo "FAIL"
   exit 1
fi

Remediation

Configure the operating system to lock an account until released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur in 15 minutes.

Add and/or modify the appropriate sections of the "/etc/pam.d/system-auth" and "/etc/pam.d/password-auth" files to match the following lines:

auth required pam_faillock.so preauth
auth required pam_faillock.so authfail
account required pam_faillock.so

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

unlock_time = 0