NixOS must enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-268134	SRG-OS-000078-GPOS-00046	ANIX-00-000810	SV-268134r1039290_rule	2024-10-25	1

Description
The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Description

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

ℹ️ Check
Verify NixOS enforces a minimum 15-character password length with the following command: $ grep minlen /etc/security/pwquality.conf minlen=15 If the value of "minlen" is set to less than "15", or is commented out, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Configure NixOS to enforce password complexity. Add/modify /etc/nixos/configuration.nix to include the following lines: environment.etc."/security/pwquality.conf".text = '' minlen=15 ''; Rebuild the system with the following command: $ sudo nixos-rebuild switch