How to lock out a user after a set number of login attempts?

The PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) module pam_tally keeps track of unsuccessful login attempts then disables user accounts when a preset limit is reached. This is often referred to as account lockout.

To lock out a user after 4 attempts, two entries need to be added in the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file:

auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_tally.so onerr=fail no_magic_root
account required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_tally.so deny=3 no_magic_root reset

The options used above are described below:

• onerr=fail
  If something strange happens, such as unable to open the file, this determines how the module should react.

• no_magic_root
  This is used to indicate that if the module is invoked by a user with uid=0, then the counter is incremented. The sys-admin should use this for daemon-launched services, like telnet/rsh/login.

• deny=3The deny=3 option is used to deny access if tally for this user exceeds 3.

• reset
  The reset option instructs the module to reset count to 0 on successful entry.

See below for a complete example of implementing this type of policy:

auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_env.so
auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_tally.so
onerr=fail no_magic_root auth sufficient 
/lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok auth required 
/lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so account required 
/lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so account required 
/lib/security/$ISA/pam_tally.so deny=5 no_magic_root reset
password requisite 
/lib/security/$ISA/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so retry=3 password sufficient 
/lib/security/$ISA/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok use_authtok md5 shadow password required 
/lib/security/$ISA/$ISA/pam_deny.so session required 
/lib/security/$ISA/$ISA/pam_limits.so session required 
/lib/security/$ISA/$ISA/pam_unix.so

For more detailed information on the PAM system please see the documentation contained under /usr/share/doc/pam-<version>

For information on how to unlock a user that has expired their deny tally see additional Knowledgebase articles regarding unlocking a user account and seeing failed logins with the faillog command.

JayVora at 2007-9-5 >