SV-38769r1: The system must enforce the entire password during authentication. | AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

The system must enforce the entire password during authentication.

Description

Discussion Text

Some common password hashing schemes only process the first eight characters of a user's password, which reduces the effective strength of the password.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000205

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:40
# The system must enforce the entire password during authentication.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# No password hashes in /etc/passwd
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  (sed -En 's/^[^:]+:([^:]+)/\1/p' '/etc/passdw') | grep -Pq '^([!]|[*])$'
}
# All passwd entries in /etc/security/passwd are sha256 or sha512
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_2() {
  (sed -En 's/^[ 	]*password[ 	]*=[ 	]*([^
 	]+)/\1/p' '/etc/security/passwd') | grep -Pq '^[*]$|^[{]ssha(256|512)[}]'
}

if ( test_1 && test_2 ); 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 Definition: oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:40

if ! grep -q '^[ !]|[*]$' /etc/passwd; then
    if grep -q '^\*[ ]*password[ ]*=[ ]*{ssha256|ssha512}' /etc/security/passwd; then
        echo "PASS"
        exit 0
    fi
fi
echo "FAIL"
exit 1

Remediation

Configure the system to enforce the correctness of the entire password during authentication.

Configure the system to use sha password hashing.
#chsec -f /etc/security/login.cfg -s usw -a pwd_algorithm=ssha256