STIGUI
V-258120CAT II — Medium severitySV-258120r1268251_rule

RHEL 9 must not have accounts configured with blank or null passwords.

Rule version RHEL-09-611155 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

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

Check

Verify that null or blank passwords cannot be used 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 RHEL 9 to have a password or lock the account with the following commands:

Perform a password reset:

$ sudo passwd [username] 

To lock an account:

$ sudo passwd -l [username]

Identifiers

Group ID
V-258120
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-258120r1268251_rule
Check ID
C-61861r926345_chk
Fix ID
F-61785r926346_fix