SV-38675r1: The system must require passwords to contain no more than three consecutive repeating characters. | AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

The system must require passwords to contain no more than three consecutive repeating characters.

Description

Discussion Text

To enforce the use of complex passwords, the number of consecutive repeating characters is limited. Passwords with excessive repeated characters may be more vulnerable to password-guessing attacks.

How this relates to the STIG checklist: STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000366

Additional Details

Responsibility

System Administrator

IA Controls

IAIA-1, IAIA-2

References

DPMS Target AIX 6.1 DISA DPMS Target AIX 6.1 2176

SCC Automation Reference

The reconstructed evaluation script behind this rule's OVAL check(s) — every module a compound check combines, with this rule's own concrete values and DISA's SCC tool's real per-module mechanism curated from static teardown of SCC releases.

#!/bin/bash
# Reconstructed from oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:47
# The system must require passwords to contain no more than three consecutive repeating characters.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# all instances of maxrepeats are OK
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  [ "$(sed -En 's/^[ 	]*maxrepeats[ 	]*=[ 	]*([0-9]+)/\1/p' '/etc/security/user')" -le 3 ]
}
# default specifies maxrepeats
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_2() {
  (sed -En 's/^([^: 	
]+):
([^:
]+=[^
]*
)*[ 	]*maxrepeats = [0-9]+/\1/p' '/etc/security/user') | grep -qxF 'default'
}
# all users specify maxrepeats
# password_object (password_test)
test_3() {
  ! ( getent passwd .* &>/dev/null )
}

if ( test_1 && ( test_2 || test_3 ) ); then
  echo "PASS"
else
  echo "FAIL"
fi

Assessment Script Powered by AISandbox-executed

A standalone Shell script to assess this control automatically. Review before running it in your environment.

Syntax-checked and actually executed in an isolated sandbox (not the real system this checks) — confirmed to run without errors.

#!/bin/sh
# oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:47 compliance check


if grep -q '^[ \t]*maxrepeats[ \t]*=[ \t]*3' /etc/security/user; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
fi

if grep -q '^default:[ \t]*maxrepeats = 3' /etc/security/user; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
fi

if grep -q '^[^: \t\n]+:[ \t]*maxrepeats = 3' /etc/security/user; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
fi

echo "FAIL"
exit 1

Remediation

Use the chsec command to set maxrepeats to 3.

# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a maxrepeats=3

# chuser maxrepeats=3 < user id >