postprocess: Disable empty password authentication via authselect#1934
postprocess: Disable empty password authentication via authselect#1934sebrandon1 wants to merge 1 commit into
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Activate authselect with the 'without-nullok' feature to remove the nullok parameter from pam_unix.so in system-auth and password-auth. This prevents authentication with empty passwords on RHCOS nodes. Uses the supported RHEL mechanism (authselect) rather than replacing PAM files directly. The without-nullok feature was purpose-built for this use case by the authselect maintainer in 2018: authselect/authselect@e1fbbdc RHCOS nodes are managed infrastructure with no legitimate use case for empty password authentication. Flagged as HIGH severity across all compliance profiles (E8, CIS, Moderate, PCI-DSS). Related: - authselect issue: authselect/authselect#94 - Upstream scanner fix: ComplianceAsCode/content#14602
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I think this is reasonable but it should likely be done in the base layer (https://github.com/coreos/rhel-coreos-config) or maybe even in Fedora CoreOS directly (https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-config). |
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Note that while I agree that this is a valid hardening option, users must explicitly set an empty password for the root account for that option to actually matter as we do not set a password for root by default. |
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@travier Noted! I'll try https://github.com/coreos/rhel-coreos-config next. Thank you! |
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RHCOS inherits
nullokin PAM from the RHEL defaults, which permits authentication with empty passwords. RHCOS nodes are managed infrastructure with no legitimate use case for password-based login, let alone empty passwords, so this has no functional impact on existing deployments.This adds a postprocess step that runs:
and verifies that
nullokwas removed fromsystem-authandpassword-auth.Why this change
This is flagged as a HIGH severity finding across every compliance profile that applies to RHCOS: Essential 8, CIS, NIST Moderate, and PCI-DSS. Unlike many hardening recommendations where benchmarks disagree, removing
nullokis consistent across all of them.Today, the compliance-operator remediation for this finding is broken on RHCOS 9 — it generates RHEL 8 era PAM templates that don't apply cleanly. Fixing it at the image level eliminates the issue for all clusters without requiring per-node MachineConfig remediation.
Why the maintenance burden is low
authselectwith itswithout-nullokfeature flag — the supported RHEL mechanism purpose-built for this (authselect/authselect#94, landed in 2018)Scope
This is intentionally narrow. We understand the concern about carrying hardening overrides that diverge from RHEL defaults and create ongoing maintenance. This is not the start of a campaign to upstream every compliance checklist item into RHCOS.
A small number of changes like this one — high severity, universally agreed upon across benchmarks, zero functional risk, and using existing RHEL tooling — are worth considering. We're happy to discuss which additional items (if any) would meet that bar in separate conversations.
References
without-nullokfeature: authselect/authselect@e1fbbdc