[Bug 1927796] Please test proposed package

[Łukasz Zemczak]

Hello Richard, or anyone else affected,

Accepted pam into focal-proposed. The package will build now and be
available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/1.3.1-5ubuntu4.2
in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been
performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-
focal to verification-done-focal. If it does not fix the bug for you,
please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-
failed-focal. In either case, without details of your testing we will
not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1927796

Title:
  [SRU]pam_tally2 can cause accounts to be locked by correct password.
  pam_faillock use is the recommended fix

Status in pam package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in pam source package in Bionic:
  In Progress
Status in pam source package in Focal:
  Fix Committed
Status in pam source package in Groovy:
  Fix Committed
Status in pam source package in Hirsute:
  Fix Committed
Status in pam source package in Impish:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  [IMPACT]
  There is a known issue in pam_tally2 which may cause an account to be lock down even with correct password, in a busy node environment where simultaneous logins takes place (https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam/issues/71).

  There are already two customer cases from Canonical clients
  complaining about this behavior (00297697 and 00303806).

  Also, potentially, this will cause further problems in the future,
  since both STIG benchmarks and CIS benchmarks rely on pam_tally2 to
  lock accounts when wrong passwords are used. And both benchmarks - but
  specially STIG - requires use of a lot of audit rules, which can lead
  to the busy node environment.

  The issue impacts all pam_tally2 versions distributed in all currently
  supported Ubuntu versions and also the next unreleased one. Note that,
  according to https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam/issues/71, there
  is no plan to fix this issue!

  [FIX]
  This fix proposes to add pam_faillock module to the PAM package, so users of pam_tally2 having issues can migrate to pam_faillock. We also plan to modify the current STIG benchmarks to rely on pam_faillock instead of pam_tally2, but in order to do so, we need the pam_faillock module to be available.

  Note that we don't propose to remove pam_tally2, since not every user
  of this module is affected.

  [TEST]
  Tested on a VM installed with Focal server iso and on another with Bionic server iso. Enabled pam_faillock module as recommeded by its man page. Then tried to log over ssh with an incorrect password, until the account got locked. Waited for the configured grace time to unlock and logged in using the correct password.

  Note that, since the pam_tally2 issue is caused by a racing condition,
  with a hard to recreate environment (we could not even reproduce it
  with pam_tally2), we could not reproduce the conditions to test
  pam_faillock with.

  [REGRESSION POTENTIAL]
  The regression potential for this is small, since we're not removing the old pam_tally2 module, just adding another one. So anyone still using pam_tally2 will be able to do so.

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