STIGUI
V-261378CAT II — Medium severitySV-261378r996568_rule

SLEM 5 must enforce passwords that contain at least one lowercase character.

Rule version SLEM-05-611015 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Use of a complex password helps increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Check

Verify SLEM 5 enforces password complexity by requiring at least one lower character with the following command:

     > grep pam_cracklib.so /etc/pam.d/common-password
     password requisite pam_cracklib.so lcredit=-1

If the value for "lcredit" is not "-1", if "lcredit" is missing from the line, the second column value different from "requisite", the line is commented out, or the line is missing, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure SLEM 5 to enforce password complexity by requiring at least one lowercase character.

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and edit the line containing "pam_cracklib.so" to contain the option "lcredit=-1" after the third column.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-261378
Group title
SRG-OS-000070-GPOS-00038
Rule ID
SV-261378r996568_rule
Check ID
C-65107r996567_chk
Fix ID
F-65015r996000_fix