TOSS must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-253087 | SRG-OS-000266-GPOS-00101 | TOSS-04-040350 | SV-253087r1016318_rule | 2026-02-19 | 2 |
Description
Use of a complex password helps to 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.
TOSS utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf."
ℹ️ Check
Verify the value for "ocredit" in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" with the following command:
$ sudo grep ocredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf
ocredit = -1
If the value of "ocredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding.
✔️ Fix
Configure the operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used by setting the "ocredit" option.
Add the following line to /etc/security/pwquality.conf (or modify the line to have the required value):
ocredit = -1