Often a requirement in a secure environment is to lockdown users after they enter a wrong password for a specified number of times. This makes the system protect againt attacks likes password dictionary attacks. The post describes how to lock an account after N incorrect login attempts using pam.d files.
Lock user after N incorrect logins
1. First, take a backup of the file /etc/pam.d/password-auth and /etc/pam.d/system-auth. Then add the following lines to the file.
auth required pam_tally2.so file=/var/log/tallylog deny=N even_deny_root unlock_time=1200 account required pam_tally2.so
Here,
file=/var/log/tallylog – Failed login attempts are logged here.
deny – allows us to set the value N (no. of attempts) after which the user account should be locked.
even_deny_root – makes sure that the same rule applies to root user as well. To exclude root user from this policy, simply remove the parameter from the line. [Optional]
unlock_time – is the time for which the account should stay locked [Optional]
The sample /etc/pam.d/system-auth will look as follows:
# cat /etc/pam.d/system-auth #%PAM-1.0 # This file is auto-generated. # User changes will be destroyed the next time authconfig is run. auth required pam_env.so auth sufficient pam_fprintd.so auth sufficient pam_unix.so nullok try_first_pass auth requisite pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 1000 quiet_success auth required pam_deny.so account required pam_unix.so account sufficient pam_localuser.so account sufficient pam_succeed_if.so uid < 1000 quiet account required pam_permit.so password requisite pam_pwquality.so try_first_pass local_users_only retry=3 authtok_type= password sufficient pam_unix.so sha512 shadow nullok try_first_pass use_authtok password required pam_deny.so session optional pam_keyinit.so revoke session required pam_limits.so -session optional pam_systemd.so session [success=1 default=ignore] pam_succeed_if.so service in crond quiet use_uid session required pam_unix.so
2. Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config to increase the MaxAuthTries value to a higher value than the above number.
# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config MaxAuthTries 10
3. Save the file after checking the ChallengeResponseAuthentication no is already set in the file.
# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
4. Restart the sshd service.
# service sshd restart
Reset the lock
1. faillog command reports the number of failed login attempts for a specific user:
# faillog -u [username]
2. If pam_tally2.so is being used, pam_tally2 command can be used to check number of failed login attempts for a specific user:
# pam_tally2 -u [username]
3. To reset the lock for a user, pam_tally2 command can be used:
# pam_tally2 --user=[username] --reset