The Photon operating system must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-256506	PHTN-30-000029	SV-256506r887192_rule		Medium

Description
Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the result is a password that is not changed per policy requirements.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-12-01

Details

Check Text ( C-60181r887190_chk )
At the command line, run the following command: # grep pam_pwhistory /etc/pam.d/system-password|grep --color=always "remember=." Expected result: password requisite pam_pwhistory.so enforce_for_root use_authtok remember=5 retry=3 If the output does not include the "remember=5" setting as shown in the expected result, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-60124r887191_fix)
Navigate to and open: /etc/pam.d/system-password Add the following line after the "password requisite pam_cracklib.so" statement: password requisite pam_pwhistory.so enforce_for_root use_authtok remember=5 retry=3 Note: On vCenter appliances, the equivalent file must be edited under "/etc/applmgmt/appliance", if one exists, for the changes to persist after a reboot.