Details

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

Solution

Configure the Ubuntu operating system to enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one lower-case character be used.

Add or update the following line in the ‘/etc/security/pwquality.conf’ file or a configuration file in the /etc/pwquality.conf.d/ directory to contain the ‘lcredit’ parameter:

lcredit=-1

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_CAN_Ubuntu_16-04_LTS_V2R3_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Identification and Authentication.This control applies to the following type of system Unix.

References

• 800-53|IA-5(1)(a)
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000193
• Rule-ID|SV-214950r610931_rule
• STIG-ID|UBTU-16-010110
• STIG-Legacy|SV-90131
• STIG-Legacy|V-75451
• Vuln-ID|V-214950

Source

• Tenable.com/audits