Linux Password Policy

From Brandonhutchinson.com

Revision as of 21:33, 5 December 2007

The following examples are on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 system.

Password Aging

New Accounts

/etc/login.defs and /etc/default/useradd are the files related to password aging on new accounts.

/etc/login.defs:

# Password aging controls:
#
#       PASS_MAX_DAYS   Maximum number of days a password may be used.
#       PASS_MIN_DAYS   Minimum number of days allowed between password changes.
#       PASS_MIN_LEN    Minimum acceptable password length.
#       PASS_WARN_AGE   Number of days warning given before a password expires.

/etc/default/useradd:

INACTIVE=-1
EXPIRE=

By default, password inactivity (i.e., the number of days after a password is expired in which a user can no longer reset it themselves) and an account expiration date are disabled.

Note that PASS_MIN_LEN in /etc/login.defs has no effect. Minimum password length is controlled by the pam_cracklib module. If minlen= is not specified in pam_cracklib, the default minimum password length is 6 characters.

Existing Accounts

/usr/bin/chage is used to modify password aging on existing accounts. chage does not update the last password change field (field 3) in /etc/shadow, so passwords could expire immediately after running it.

Example

User hutchib was already created with essentially no password aging (the default PASS_MAX_DAYS of 99999). To configure the following:

• A minimum of 7 days between password changes.
• Password expiration after 90 days.
• Begin warning about password expiration 14 days in advance.

# /usr/bin/chage -m 7 -M 90 -W 14 hutchib

What happens when your password expires?

• If the account is inactive (see chage -I and field 7 in /etc/shadow), you will be unable to login and your password will have to be manually reset by an administrator.

e.g., /var/log/messages entry:

Dec  4 14:33:42 host sshd(pam_unix)[31601]: account hutchib has expired (failed to change password)

• If the account is expired but not inactive, you are allowed a "grace login" where your old password is accepted, but you must immediately change your password. After changing your password, the connection is closed and you must login again.

WARNING: Your password has expired.
You must change your password now and login again!
Changing password for user hutchib.
Changing password for hutchib
(current) UNIX password: 
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
Connection to host closed.

Password Complexity

Both pam_cracklib and pam_passwordqc are modules used in enforcing password complexity. Although pam_passwordqc is more powerful, I'll be using pam_cracklib as its capabilities meet our site's needs and it is already in the PAM stack.

Example: Require a minimum password length of 9 characters, with at least 1 lowercase character, 1 uppercase character, and 1 digit.

Relevant entry in bold in /etc/pam.d/system-auth:

password    requisite     /lib/security/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so retry=3 minlen=12 lcredit=1 ucredit=1 dcredit=1 ocredit=0

Password History

Password history--i.e., preventing re-use of old passwords--may be enabled using both pam_unix (stores the old password) and pam_cracklib (prevents re-use). By default, password history is disabled.

Example: Prevent re-use of each user's last 24 passwords.

• Create the password database store.

# touch /etc/security/opasswd
# chown root:root /etc/security/opasswd
# chmod 600 /etc/security/opasswd

• Configure PAM.

Relevant entry in bold in /etc/pam.d/system-auth:

password    sufficient    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok use_authtok md5 shadow remember=24

Links

• Enable password aging on Linux systems
• Enforce strong passwords with pam_passwdqc
• How do I lock out a user after a set number of login attempts in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1?
• Strong Passwords with PAM