STIGUI
V-251706CAT I — High severitySV-251706r1017359_rule

The RHEL 8 operating system must not have accounts configured with blank or null passwords.

Rule version RHEL-08-010121 · STIG v2 · 2026-05-20

Discussion

If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.

Check

Check the "/etc/shadow" file for blank passwords with the following command:

$ sudo awk -F: '!$2 {print $1}' /etc/shadow

If the command returns any results, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure all accounts on the system to have a password or lock the account with the following commands:

Perform a password reset: $ sudo passwd [username] Lock an account: $ sudo passwd -l [username]

Identifiers

Group ID
V-251706
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-251706r1017359_rule
Check ID
C-55143r809340_chk
Fix ID
F-55097r809341_fix