- Lab
-
Libraries: If you want this lab, consider one of these libraries.
- Cloud

Configure an Account Lockout Policy
In this lab, we will use the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) to create an account lockout policy. Account lockout policies are crucial in preventing brute force password attacks from being successful. *This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

Lab Info
Table of Contents
-
Challenge
Install PAM
- To install PAM, run the following command:
sudo yum install -y pam-devel
-
Challenge
Create an Account Lockout Policy
- To set up an account lockout policy that will lock for 15 minutes after 3 consecutive failed logins and includes the root account in the policy, you'll need to add the following lines to both
/etc/pam.d/password-auth
and/etc/pam.d/system-auth
:
auth required pam_faillock.so preauth silent audit deny=3 even_deny_root unlock_time=900 auth [default=die] pam_faillock.so authfail audit deny=3 even_deny_root unlock_time=900
- The first line above should be the second uncommented line in the files
- The second line above should be the fourth uncommented line in the files.
- Next, we need to add the following line as the first line in the
account
section of thepassword-auth
andsystem-auth
files:
account required pam_faillock.so
- To set up an account lockout policy that will lock for 15 minutes after 3 consecutive failed logins and includes the root account in the policy, you'll need to add the following lines to both
-
Challenge
Test the Account Lockout Policy
- Open a new shell to your host
- Enter incorrect login credentials for
cloud_user
- Run the command
faillock
and you now see the recorded failed logins
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