The Photon operating system must enforce a minimum eight-character password length.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-256507	SRG-OS-000078-GPOS-00046	PHTN-30-000030	SV-256507r982202_rule	2024-12-16	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
At the command line, run the following command: # grep pam_cracklib /etc/pam.d/system-password\|grep --color=always "minlen=.." Example result: password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=8 minclass=4 difok=4 retry=3 maxsequence=0 enforce_for_root If the output does not include minlen >= 8, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Navigate to and open: /etc/pam.d/system-password Add the following, replacing any existing "pam_cracklib.so" line: password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=8 minclass=4 difok=4 retry=3 maxsequence=0 enforce_for_root 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.

✔️ Fix

Navigate to and open: /etc/pam.d/system-password Add the following, replacing any existing "pam_cracklib.so" line: password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=8 minclass=4 difok=4 retry=3 maxsequence=0 enforce_for_root 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.