V-279605

Discussion

Using 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 is, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Check Content

1. Verify Nutanix OS uses "pwquality" to enforce password complexity rules using the following command.

$ sudo cat /etc/pam.d/password-auth | grep pam_pwquality
password    requisite     pam_pwquality.so try_first_pass …

If the command does not return a line containing the value "pam_pwquality.so" as shown, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

2. Verify Nutanix AOS is configured to require complex passwords. Note: The value to require a number of uppercase characters to be set is expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".

3. Check the value for "ucredit" in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" using the following command.

$ sudo grep ucredit /etc/security/pwquality.conf 
ucredit = -1

If the value of "ucredit" is not set to a negative value, this is a finding.