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AIX must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-215224 AIX7-00-001127 SV-215224r508663_rule Medium
Description
Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.
STIG Date
IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide 2022-06-06

Details

Check Text ( C-16422r294123_chk )
From the command prompt, run the following command to check the system default "histsize" attribute value:
# lssec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a histsize
default histsize=5

If the default "histsize" value is not set, or its value is less than "5", this is a finding.

From the command prompt, run the following command to check "histsize" attribute value for all accounts:
# lsuser -a histsize ALL
root histsize=5
user1 histsize=5
user2 histsize=5
user3 histsize=6

If any user does not have "histsize" set, or its "histsize" value is less than "5", this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-16420r294124_fix)
From the command prompt, run the following command to set "histsize=5" for the default stanza in "/etc/security/user":
# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a histsize=5

For each user who has "histsize" value less than "5", set its "histsize" to "5" by running the following command from command prompt:
# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s [user_name] -a histsize=5