Set Password Maximum Consecutive Repeating Characters

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Description

The pam_pwquality module’s maxrepeat parameter controls requirements for consecutive repeating characters. When set to a positive number, it will reject passwords which contain more than that number of consecutive characters. Modify the maxrepeat setting in /etc/security/pwquality.conf to equal 3 to prevent a run of (3 + 1) or more identical characters.

Rationale

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.

Passwords with excessive repeating characters may be more vulnerable to password-guessing attacks.

Remediation

Shell script

The following script can be run on the host to remediate the issue.

#!/bin/bash

# Remediation is applicable only in certain platforms
if rpm --quiet -q pam; then

var_password_pam_maxrepeat='3'






# Strip any search characters in the key arg so that the key can be replaced without
# adding any search characters to the config file.
stripped_key=$(sed 's/[\^=\$,;+]*//g' <<< "^maxrepeat")

# shellcheck disable=SC2059
printf -v formatted_output "%s = %s" "$stripped_key" "$var_password_pam_maxrepeat"

# If the key exists, change it. Otherwise, add it to the config_file.
# We search for the key string followed by a word boundary (matched by \>),
# so if we search for 'setting', 'setting2' won't match.
if LC_ALL=C grep -q -m 1 -i -e "^maxrepeat\\>" "/etc/security/pwquality.conf"; then
    escaped_formatted_output=$(sed -e 's|/|\\/|g' <<< "$formatted_output")
    LC_ALL=C sed -i --follow-symlinks "s/^maxrepeat\\>.*/$escaped_formatted_output/gi" "/etc/security/pwquality.conf"
else
    if [[ -s "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" ]] && [[ -n "$(tail -c 1 -- "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" || true)" ]]; then
        LC_ALL=C sed -i --follow-symlinks '$a'\\ "/etc/security/pwquality.conf"
    fi
    cce="CCE-82055-5"
    printf '# Per %s: Set %s in %s\n' "${cce}" "${formatted_output}" "/etc/security/pwquality.conf" >> "/etc/security/pwquality.conf"
    printf '%s\n' "$formatted_output" >> "/etc/security/pwquality.conf"
fi

else
    >&2 echo 'Remediation is not applicable, nothing was done'
fi

Ansible playbook

The following playbook can be run with Ansible to remediate the issue.

- name: Gather the package facts
  package_facts:
    manager: auto
  tags:
  - CCE-82055-5
  - DISA-STIG-RHEL-07-010180
  - NIST-800-53-CM-6(a)
  - NIST-800-53-IA-5(4)
  - NIST-800-53-IA-5(c)
  - accounts_password_pam_maxrepeat
  - low_complexity
  - low_disruption
  - medium_severity
  - no_reboot_needed
  - restrict_strategy
- name: XCCDF Value var_password_pam_maxrepeat # promote to variable
  set_fact:
    var_password_pam_maxrepeat: !!str 3
  tags:
    - always

- name: Set Password Maximum Consecutive Repeating Characters - Ensure PAM variable
    maxrepeat is set accordingly
  ansible.builtin.lineinfile:
    create: true
    dest: /etc/security/pwquality.conf
    regexp: ^#?\s*maxrepeat
    line: maxrepeat = {{ var_password_pam_maxrepeat }}
  when: '"pam" in ansible_facts.packages'
  tags:
  - CCE-82055-5
  - DISA-STIG-RHEL-07-010180
  - NIST-800-53-CM-6(a)
  - NIST-800-53-IA-5(4)
  - NIST-800-53-IA-5(c)
  - accounts_password_pam_maxrepeat
  - low_complexity
  - low_disruption
  - medium_severity
  - no_reboot_needed
  - restrict_strategy