PAM (Pluggable authentication module)

Note: this document is written in reference to Red Hat Linux 6.2+

PAM (Pluggable authentication module) is very diverse in the types of modules it provides. One could accomplish many authentication tasks using PAM. However PAM expands itself beyond typical authentication programs, as it allows an admin to employ other system-critical features such as resource limiting, su protection, and TTY restrictions. Much of PAM's features are not within the scope of this document, but for further reading you can refer to the links at the bottom of this document.

Firstly we must enable the pam_limits module, inside /etc/pam.d/login. Add the following to the end of the file:

session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so

After adding the line above, the /etc/pam.d/login file should look something like this:

#%PAM-1.0
auth required /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
auth required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
auth required /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
account required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
password required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
session required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
session optional /lib/security/pam_console.so
session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so

The limits.conf file located under the /etc/security directory can be used to control and set resource policies. limits.conf is well commented and easy to use - so do take the time to skim over its contents. It is important to set resource limits on all your users so they can't perform denial of service attacks with such things as fork bombs, amongst other things it can also stop 'stray' server processes from taking the system down with it.

It is also a good idea to separate rules for users, admins, and other (other being everything else). This is important, cause take for instance a scenario where a user fork bombs the system - it could in effect disable an administrator's ability to login to the system and take proper actions, or worse crash the server.

Below is the default policy used on a server iv configured:

# For everyone (users and other)
* hard core 0
* - maxlogins 12
* hard nproc 50
* hard rss 20000

# For group wheel (admins)
@wheel - maxlogins 5
@wheel hard nproc 80
@wheel hard rss 75000

#End of file

The first set of rules say to prohibit the creation of core files - core 0 , restrict the number of processes to 50 - nproc 50, restrict logins to 12 - maxlogins 12, and restrict memory usage to 20MB - rss 20000 for everyone except the super user. The the later rules for admins, say to restrict logins to 5 - maxlogins 5, restrict the number of processes to 80 - nproc 80, and restrict the memory usage to 75MB - rss 75000.

All the above only concerns users who have entered via the login prompt on your system. The asterisk (*) defines all users and at wheel (@wheel) defines only users in group wheel. Make sure to add your administrative users into the wheel group (this can be done in /etc/group).

Finally edit the /etc/profile file and change the following line:

ulimit -c 1000000

to read:

ulimit -S -c 1000000 > /dev/null 2<&1

This modification is used to avoid getting error messages like 'Unable to reach limit' during login. On newer editions of Red Hat Linux, the later ulimit setting is default.

Further reading is available in The Linux-PAM System Administrators' Guide located at:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/L...M-html/pam.html