RHEL 9 must enable certificate based smart card authentication.

Without the use of multifactor authentication, the ease of access to privileged functions is greatly increased. Multifactor authentication requires using two or more factors to achieve authentication. A privileged account is defined as an information system account with authorizations of a privileged user. The DoW Common Access Card (CAC) with DoW-approved PKI is an example of multifactor authentication.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000375-GPOS-00160, SRG-OS-000105-GPOS-00052

Note: If the system administrator (SA) demonstrates the use of an approved alternate multifactor authentication method, this requirement is Not Applicable.

To verify that RHEL 9 has smart cards enabled in System Security Services Daemon (SSSD), run the following command:

$ sudo grep -ir pam_cert_auth /etc/sssd/sssd.conf /etc/sssd/conf.d/

pam_cert_auth = True

If "pam_cert_auth" is not set to "True", the line is commented out, or the line is missing, this is a finding.

Edit the file "/etc/sssd/sssd.conf" or a configuration file in "/etc/sssd/conf.d" and add or edit the following line:

pam_cert_auth = True