AIX must enforce a minimum 15-character password length.
An XCCDF Rule
Description
<VulnDiscussion>The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-215226r508663_rule
- Severity
- High
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
From the command prompt, run the following command to set "minlen=15" for the default stanza in "/etc/security/user":
# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a minlen=15
For each user who has "minlen" value less than "15", set its "minlen" to "15" by running the following command from command prompt:
# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s [user_name] -a minlen=15