STIGUI
V-281179CAT II — Medium severitySV-281179r1166489_rule

RHEL 10 must enforce a delay of at least four seconds between login prompts following a failed login attempt.

Rule version RHEL-10-600200 · STIG v1 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

Increasing the time between a failed authentication attempt and reprompting to enter credentials helps to slow a single-threaded brute-force attack.

Check

Verify RHEL 10 enforces a delay of at least four seconds between console login prompts following a failed login attempt with the following command:

$ sudo grep -i fail_delay /etc/login.defs FAIL_DELAY 4

If the value of "FAIL_DELAY" is not set to "4" or greater, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 10 to enforce a delay of at least four seconds between login prompts following a failed console login attempt.

Modify the "/etc/login.defs" file to set the "FAIL_DELAY" parameter to "4" or greater:

FAIL_DELAY 4

Identifiers

Group ID
V-281179
Group title
SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
Rule ID
SV-281179r1166489_rule
Check ID
C-85740r1166487_chk
Fix ID
F-85645r1166488_fix