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V-281196

CAT II (Medium)

RHEL 10 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful login attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.

Rule ID

SV-281196r1166540_rule

STIG

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-002238 CCI-000044

Discussion

By limiting the number of failed login attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128, SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005

Check Content

Verify RHEL 10 locks an account after three unsuccessful login attempts within a period of 15 minutes with the following command:

$ sudo grep fail_interval /etc/security/faillock.conf
fail_interval = 900

If the "fail_interval" option is not set to "900" or less (but not "0"), the line is commented out, or the line is missing, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure RHEL 10 to lock out the "root" account after a number of incorrect login attempts within 15 minutes using "pam_faillock.so". 

Enable the feature using the following command:

$ authselect enable-feature with-faillock

Edit the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file as follows:

fail_interval = 900