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-pam_cracklib — PAM module to check the password against dictionary words
-
-━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
-
-DESCRIPTION
-
-This module can be plugged into the password stack of a given application to
-provide some plug-in strength-checking for passwords.
-
-The action of this module is to prompt the user for a password and check its
-strength against a system dictionary and a set of rules for identifying poor
-choices.
-
-The first action is to prompt for a single password, check its strength and
-then, if it is considered strong, prompt for the password a second time (to
-verify that it was typed correctly on the first occasion). All being well, the
-password is passed on to subsequent modules to be installed as the new
-authentication token.
-
-The strength checks works in the following manner: at first the Cracklib
-routine is called to check if the password is part of a dictionary; if this is
-not the case an additional set of strength checks is done. These checks are:
-
-Palindrome
-
- Is the new password a palindrome of the old one?
-
-Case Change Only
-
- Is the new password the the old one with only a change of case?
-
-Similar
-
- Is the new password too much like the old one? This is primarily controlled
- by one argument, difok which is a number of characters that if different
- between the old and new are enough to accept the new password, this
- defaults to 10 or 1/2 the size of the new password whichever is smaller.
-
- To avoid the lockup associated with trying to change a long and complicated
- password, difignore is available. This argument can be used to specify the
- minimum length a new password needs to be before the difok value is
- ignored. The default value for difignore is 23.
-
-Simple
-
- Is the new password too small? This is controlled by 5 arguments minlen,
- dcredit, ucredit, lcredit, and ocredit. See the section on the arguments
- for the details of how these work and there defaults.
-
-Rotated
-
- Is the new password a rotated version of the old password?
-
-Already used
-
- Was the password used in the past? Previously used passwords are to be
- found in /etc/security/opasswd.
-
-This module with no arguments will work well for standard unix password
-encryption. With md5 encryption, passwords can be longer than 8 characters and
-the default settings for this module can make it hard for the user to choose a
-satisfactory new password. Notably, the requirement that the new password
-contain no more than 1/2 of the characters in the old password becomes a
-non-trivial constraint. For example, an old password of the form "the quick
-brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs" would be difficult to change... In
-addition, the default action is to allow passwords as small as 5 characters in
-length. For a md5 systems it can be a good idea to increase the required
-minimum size of a password. One can then allow more credit for different kinds
-of characters but accept that the new password may share most of these
-characters with the old password.
-
-OPTIONS
-
-debug
-
- This option makes the module write information to syslog(3) indicating the
- behavior of the module (this option does not write password information to
- the log file).
-
-type=XXX
-
- The default action is for the module to use the following prompts when
- requesting passwords: "New UNIX password: " and "Retype UNIX password: ".
- The default word UNIX can be replaced with this option.
-
-retry=N
-
- Prompt user at most N times before returning with error. The default is 1
-
-difok=N
-
- This argument will change the default of 5 for the number of characters in
- the new password that must not be present in the old password. In addition,
- if 1/2 of the characters in the new password are different then the new
- password will be accepted anyway.
-
-difignore=N
-
- How many characters should the password have before difok will be ignored.
- The default is 23.
-
-minlen=N
-
- The minimum acceptable size for the new password (plus one if credits are
- not disabled which is the default). In addition to the number of characters
- in the new password, credit (of +1 in length) is given for each different
- kind of character (other, upper, lower and digit). The default for this
- parameter is 9 which is good for a old style UNIX password all of the same
- type of character but may be too low to exploit the added security of a md5
- system. Note that there is a pair of length limits in Cracklib itself, a
- "way too short" limit of 4 which is hard coded in and a defined limit (6)
- that will be checked without reference to minlen. If you want to allow
- passwords as short as 5 characters you should not use this module.
-
-dcredit=N
-
- (N >= 0) This is the maximum credit for having digits in the new password.
- If you have less than or N digits, each digit will count +1 towards meeting
- the current minlen value. The default for dcredit is 1 which is the
- recommended value for minlen less than 10.
-
- (N < 0) This is the minimum number of digits that must be met for a new
- password.
-
-ucredit=N
-
- (N >= 0) This is the maximum credit for having upper case letters in the
- new password. If you have less than or N upper case letters each letter
- will count +1 towards meeting the current minlen value. The default for
- ucredit is 1 which is the recommended value for minlen less than 10.
-
- (N > 0) This is the minimum number of upper case letters that must be met
- for a new password.
-
-lcredit=N
-
- (N >= 0) This is the maximum credit for having lower case letters in the
- new password. If you have less than or N lower case letters, each letter
- will count +1 towards meeting the current minlen value. The default for
- lcredit is 1 which is the recommended value for minlen less than 10.
-
- (N < 0) This is the minimum number of lower case letters that must be met
- for a new password.
-
-ocredit=N
-
- (N >= 0) This is the maximum credit for having other characters in the new
- password. If you have less than or N other characters, each character will
- count +1 towards meeting the current minlen value. The default for ocredit
- is 1 which is the recommended value for minlen less than 10.
-
- (N < 0) This is the minimum number of other characters that must be met for
- a new password.
-
-minclass=N
-
- The minimum number of required classes of characters for the new password.
- The default number is zero. The four classes are digits, upper and lower
- letters and other characters. The difference to the credit check is that a
- specific class if of characters is not required. Instead N out of four of
- the classes are required.
-
-use_authtok
-
- This argument is used to force the module to not prompt the user for a new
- password but use the one provided by the previously stacked password
- module.
-
-dictpath=/path/to/dict
-
- Path to the cracklib dictionaries.
-
-EXAMPLES
-
-For an example of the use of this module, we show how it may be stacked with
-the password component of pam_unix(8)
-
-#
-# These lines stack two password type modules. In this example the
-# user is given 3 opportunities to enter a strong password. The
-# "use_authtok" argument ensures that the pam_unix module does not
-# prompt for a password, but instead uses the one provided by
-# pam_cracklib.
-#
-passwd password required pam_cracklib.so retry=3
-passwd password required pam_unix.so use_authtok
-
-
-Another example (in the /etc/pam.d/passwd format) is for the case that you want
-to use md5 password encryption:
-
-#%PAM-1.0
-#
-# These lines allow a md5 systems to support passwords of at least 14
-# bytes with extra credit of 2 for digits and 2 for others the new
-# password must have at least three bytes that are not present in the
-# old password
-#
-password required pam_cracklib.so \
- difok=3 minlen=15 dcredit= 2 ocredit=2
-password required pam_unix.so use_authtok nullok md5
-
-
-And here is another example in case you don't want to use credits:
-
-#%PAM-1.0
-#
-# These lines require the user to select a password with a minimum
-# length of 8 and with at least 1 digit number, 1 upper case letter,
-# and 1 other character
-#
-password required pam_cracklib.so \
- dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 ocredit=-1 lcredit=0 minlen=8
-password required pam_unix.so use_authtok nullok md5
-
-
-AUTHOR
-
-pam_cracklib was written by Cristian Gafton <gafton@redhat.com>
-