Details

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

Configure the Ubuntu operating system to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Add or modify the ‘minlen’ parameter value to the ‘/etc/security/pwquality.conf’ file:

minlen=15

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_CAN_Ubuntu_20-04_LTS_V1R1_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-000205
• Rule-ID|SV-238225r653850_rule
• STIG-ID|UBTU-20-010054
• Vuln-ID|V-238225

Source

• Tenable.com/audits