The Photon operating system must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.
Overview
| Finding ID | Version | Rule ID | IA Controls | Severity |
| V-258822 | PHTN-40-000043 | SV-258822r933527_rule | CCI-000200 | 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 end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements. | ||||
| STIG | Date | |||
| VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide | 2023-10-29 | |||
Details
Check Text (C-258822r933527_chk)
At the command line, run the following commands to verify passwords are not reused for a minimum of five generations:
# grep '^password.*pam_pwhistory.so' /etc/pam.d/system-password
Example result:
password required pam_pwhistory.so remember=5 retry=3 enforce_for_root use_authtok
If the "remember" option is not set to "5" or greater, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-62471r933526_fix)
Navigate to and open:
/etc/pam.d/system-password
Configure the pam_pwhistory.so line to have the "remember" option set to 5 or greater as follows:
password required pam_pwhistory.so remember=5 retry=3 enforce_for_root use_authtok
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.