V-279603

Discussion

Password-based authentication applies to passwords regardless of whether they are used in single-factor or multifactor authentication. Long passwords or passphrases are preferable over shorter passwords. Enforced composition rules provide marginal security benefits while decreasing usability. However, organizations may choose to establish certain rules for password generation (e.g., minimum character length for long passwords) under certain circumstances and can enforce this requirement in IA-5(1)(h). Account recovery can occur, for example, in situations when a password is forgotten. Cryptographically protected passwords include salted one-way cryptographic hashes of passwords. The list of commonly used, compromised, or expected passwords includes passwords obtained from previous breach corpuses, dictionary words, and repetitive or sequential characters. The list includes context-specific words, such as the name of the service, username, and derivatives thereof.

Check Content

Verify Nutanix OS prevents using dictionary words for passwords.

Determine if the field "dictcheck" is set using the following command.

$ sudo grep -r dictcheck /etc/security/pwquality.conf*

/etc/security/pwquality.conf:dictcheck=1

If the "dictcheck" parameter is not set to "1", is commented out, or if conflicting results are returned, this is a finding.