All OL 8 passwords must contain at least one special character.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
low	V-248709	SRG-OS-000266-GPOS-00101	OL08-00-020280	SV-248709r1015063_rule	2025-02-20	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. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines 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. OL 8 uses "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".

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. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines 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. OL 8 uses "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" or "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/.conf" files with the following command: $ sudo grep -r ocredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf /etc/security/pwquality.conf:ocredit = -1 If the value of "ocredit" is a positive number or is commented out, this is a finding. If conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Configure OL 8 to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used by setting the "ocredit" option. Add or update the following line in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" file or a configuration file in the "/etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/" directory: ocredit = -1 Remove any configurations that conflict with the above value.