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← Back to VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-258862

CAT II (Medium)

The Photon operating system must persist lockouts between system reboots.

Rule ID

SV-258862r933647_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000044

Discussion

By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. By default, account lockout information is stored under /var/run/faillock and is not persistent between reboots.

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command to verify account locking persists lockouts between system reboots:

# grep '^dir' /etc/security/faillock.conf

Example result:

dir = /var/log/faillock

If the "dir" option is set to "/var/run/faillock", this is a finding.
If the "dir" option is not set to a persistent documented faillock directory, is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

Note: If faillock.conf is not used to configure pam_faillock.so then these options may be specified on the faillock lines in the system-auth and system-account files.

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/etc/security/faillock.conf

Add or update the following lines:

dir = /var/log/faillock

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.