Enterprise Cloud Security and Governance

Forcing strong passwords 

When a new user sets a password, it is important that they set a strong password that is not easy to crack. In Linux servers, the password is generally set with the passwd utility. The passwd utility is a PAM-aware utility and we can use the PAM configuration file to call some modules to integrate some additional functionalities.

There is one PAM module named pam_pwquality, which has the functionality to check if the given password is strong or easy to crack. Here is how it checks:

• Check if the given password is found in the dictionary
• If not, it continues with additional checks, such as the password length, upper case, lower case, and special characters depending on the settings that system administrator chooses ...