locking out user accounts after 3 login failures...

[Chuck Swiger]

Michael Carlson wrote:
> My work requires mutliple user systems to automatically lock out a user
> account after 3 login authentication failures. I am running 5.1 and I have
> not seen anything like this in PAM or login.conf (though the is the
> login-backoff option, but thats not exactly what I want).

Ugh.  Explain what "denial of service" means by asking your boss what happens if 
and when an annoyed employee enters the boss'es username and locks him out?

It's reasonable to want to improve the security of reusable passwords, but 
that's the wrong approach.  Your boss should consider biometrics or smart cards 
(SecurID)...

-- 
-Chuck