Details

Unapproved mechanisms used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied on to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised.

SUSE operating systems using encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules.

FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules use authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.

Solution

Configure the SUSE operating system to require ‘pam_unix.so auth’ to use SHA512.

Edit ‘/etc/pam.d/common-auth’ and edit the line containing ‘pam_unix.so’ to contain the option ‘sha512’ after the third column.

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_15_V1R3_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-7
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000803
• Rule-ID|SV-234824r622137_rule
• STIG-ID|SLES-15-010250
• Vuln-ID|V-234824

Source

• Tenable.com/audits