SSH Lockout not working using pam in RHEL6
 

Hi,

I am trying to configure ssh lockout for a user in RHEL6.4. I Have updated below entries in /etc/pam.d/password-auth:

auth required pam_tally2.so deny=3 onerr=fail unlock_time=900
account required pam_tally2.so

Now if i give wrong password for a user when trying to ssh to server it disconnects after 3 attempts. But after that when i again try to login giving correct password it just logs me in. Ideally it should not as i have mentioned unlock_time=900 ie 15 minutes wait time so it should not allow me to attempt to ssh for next 15 mins.

Any idea what is wrong?

The effect that a PAM module has depends where on the stack it is placed. Can you post your full auth stack? If the authentication attempt was already allowed to succeed before pam_tally is invoked, then the pam_tally rule will have no effect.

Hi,

/etc/pam.d/password-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_unix.so nullok try_first_pass
auth requisite pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 500 quiet
auth required pam_deny.so
auth required pam_tally2.so deny=3 onerr=fail unlock_time=900

account required pam_unix.so
account sufficient pam_localuser.so
account sufficient pam_succeed_if.so uid < 500 quiet
account required pam_permit.so
account required pam_tally2.so

password requisite pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3 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 [success=1 default=ignore] pam_succeed_if.so service in crond quiet use_uid
session required pam_unix.so

Exactly as I suspected- you put the pam_tally2.so line at the end of the auth stack AFTER the lines:

The "auth sufficient" line basically means "if the user types the correct password (pam_unix) then let them in without doing any further checks in the PAM stack." If that module succeeds, then pam_tally2 will never be called in your current set-up. You can fix this by putting the pam_tally2 requirement before the pam_unix check. You would need to make a similar change for the account stack. I'd suggest consulting PAM documentation since PAM can behave in sometimes strange and conter-intuitive ways as you've seen.

Note that simply changing "pam_unix" from "sufficient" to "required" will lock everyone out of your box. The reason for this is the requisite "pam_deny" call in the stack, which always refuses authentication. Because pam_unix is set as "sufficient", this call is skipped when the user types in a successful password. Another way of solving this, I think, would be to change pam_unix from "sufficient" to "required", move the pam_tally2 call directly above the pam_deny call, and change pam_tally2 from "required" to "sufficient".

As a final note, do be aware of the comment in /etc/pam.d/password-auth -- if you run authconfig on your system, the content of the file do get over-written by Red Hat's ever-so-helpful utilities.