{"id":5182,"date":"2015-09-03T10:13:45","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T02:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rmohan.com\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2015-09-03T10:13:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T02:13:45","slug":"hardening-rhel-7-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mohan.sg\/?p=5182","title":{"rendered":"Hardening RHEL 7.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Secure passwords<\/strong><\/p>\n

Passwords are the primary method that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 uses to verify a user’s
\nidentity. This is why password security is so important for protection of the user, the
\nworkstation, and the network.<\/p>\n

By default RHEL uses shadow passwords which eliminate this type of attack by storing the password hashes in the file\u00a0\/etc\/shadow, which is readable only by the root user.<\/p>\n

Strong passwords<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the storing of passwords has already been taken care of the next step is to force the creation of strong passwords.<\/p>\n

When users are asked to create or change passwords, they can use the passwd
\ncommand-line utility, which is PAM-aware (Pluggable Authentication Modules) and checks to
\nsee if the password is too short or otherwise easy to crack. This checking is performed by
\nthe pam_pwquality.so PAM module.<\/p>\n

PAM reads its configuration from the\u00a0\/etc\/pam.d\/passwd file, but the file we want to edit for tuning password policies is\u00a0\/etc\/security\/pwquality.conf<\/p>\n

Have a look at the configuration options:<\/p>\n

\"hardening_rhel_01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are the details of what each entry means:<\/p>\n