SV-38939r1: User passwords must be changed at least every 60 days. | AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

User passwords must be changed at least every 60 days.

Description

Discussion Text

Limiting the lifespan of authenticators limits the period of time an unauthorized user has access to the system while using compromised credentials and reduces the period of time available for password-guessing attacks to run against a single password.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000180

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:48
# User passwords must be changed at least every 60 days.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# no instance of maxage is 0
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  [ "$(sed -En 's/^[ 	]*maxage[ 	]*=[ 	]*([0-9]+)/\1/p' '/etc/security/user')" -ne 0 ]
}
# no instance of maxage is greater than 8
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_2() {
  [ "$(sed -En 's/^[ 	]*maxage[ 	]*=[ 	]*([0-9]+)/\1/p' '/etc/security/user')" -le 8 ]
}
# default specifies maxage
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_3() {
  (sed -En 's/^([^: 	
]+):
([^:
]+=[^
]*
)*[ 	]*maxage = [0-9]+/\1/p' '/etc/security/user') | grep -qxF 'default'
}
# all users specify maxage
# password_object (password_test)
test_4() {
  ! ( getent passwd .* &>/dev/null )
}

if ( ( test_1 && test_2 ) && ( test_3 || test_4 ) ); 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:48
if [ ! -f "/etc/security/user" ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
if grep -q "^[ \t]*maxage[ \t]*=[ \t]*0" /etc/security/user; then echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi
if ! grep -q "^[ \t]*maxage[ \t]*=[ \t]*[0-9]\{1,\}$" /etc/security/user; then echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi
if [ ! -f "/etc/passwd" ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
echo "PASS"; exit 0

Remediation

Use the chsec command to set the maxage field to 8 for each user.

# chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a maxage=8
# chuser maxage=8 < user id >