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

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 in determining 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.

Special characters are not alphanumeric. Examples include: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ *.

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

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

If the value for "ocredit" is not "-1", if "ucredit" 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.

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

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