The system must prevent the use of dictionary words for passwords.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-22307	GEN000790	SV-38678r1_rule	IAIA-1 IAIA-2	Medium

Description
An easily guessable password provides an open door to any external or internal malicious intruder. Many computer compromises occur as the result of account name and password guessing. This is generally done by someone with an automated script using repeated logon attempts until the correct account and password pair is guessed. Utilities, such as cracklib, can be used to validate that passwords are not dictionary words and meet other criteria during password changes.

Description

An easily guessable password provides an open door to any external or internal malicious intruder. Many computer compromises occur as the result of account name and password guessing. This is generally done by someone with an automated script using repeated logon attempts until the correct account and password pair is guessed. Utilities, such as cracklib, can be used to validate that passwords are not dictionary words and meet other criteria during password changes.

STIG	Date
Draft AIX Security Technical Implementation Guide	2011-08-17

Details

Check Text ( C-36908r1_chk )
Procedure: #lsuser –a dictionlist ALL If the dictionlist is blank or not listed the system is not checking against a dictionary of words that are not to be used for passwords. This is a finding.

Fix Text (F-32089r1_fix)
Install the default dictionary of words from the ‘bos.data’ fileset with smitty or installp. # smitty installp #installp bos.data Customize or modify the dictionary in /usr/share/dict/words as necessary. #vi /usr/share/dict/words Add a dictionary list to /etc/security/user file with the chsec command. #chsec –f /etc/security/user –s default –a dictionlist=/usr/share/dict/words