← Back to SLES 12 Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-217189

CAT II (Medium)

The SUSE operating system must be configured to not overwrite Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) configuration on package changes.

Rule ID

SV-217189r991589_rule

STIG

SLES 12 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V3R2

CCIs

SV-91981

Discussion

"pam-config" is a command line utility that automatically generates a system PAM configuration as packages are installed, updated or removed from the system. "pam-config" removes configurations for PAM modules and parameters that it does not know about. It may render ineffective PAM configuration by the system administrator and thus impact system security.

Check Content

Verify the SUSE operating system is configured to not overwrite Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) configuration on package changes.

Check that soft links between PAM configuration files are removed with the following command:

> find /etc/pam.d/ -type l -iname "common-*"

If any results are returned, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Copy the PAM configuration files to their static locations and remove the SUSE operating system soft links for the PAM configuration files with the following command:

> sudo sh -c 'for X in /etc/pam.d/common-*-pc; do cp -ivp --remove-destination $X ${X:0:-3}; done'

Additional information on the configuration of multifactor authentication on the SUSE operating system can be found at https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/configuring-smart-card-authentication-suse-linux-enterprise/.