The DBMS must support organizational requirements to enforce password complexity by the number of special characters used.

From Oracle Database 12c Security Technical Implementation Guide

Part of SRG-APP-000169-DB-000176

Associated with: CCI-001619

SV-76219r1_rule The DBMS must support organizational requirements to enforce password complexity by the number of special characters used.

Vulnerability discussion

Password complexity or strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password is, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password.Note that user authentication and account management must be done via an enterprise-wide mechanism whenever possible. Examples of enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms include, but are not limited to, Active Directory and LDAP This requirement applies to cases where it is necessary to have accounts directly managed by Oracle.

Check content

If all user accounts are managed and authenticated by the OS or an enterprise-level authentication/access mechanism, and not by Oracle, this is not a finding. For each profile that can be applied to accounts where authentication is under Oracle's control, determine the password verification function, if any, that is in use: SELECT * FROM SYS.DBA_PROFILES WHERE RESOURCE_NAME = 'PASSWORD_VERIFY_FUNCTION' [AND PROFILE NOT IN ()] ORDER BY PROFILE; Bearing in mind that a profile can inherit from another profile, and the root profile is called DEFAULT, determine the name of the password verification function effective for each profile. If, for any profile, the function name is null, this is a finding. For each password verification function, examine its source code. If it does not enforce the organization-defined minimum number of special characters (1 unless otherwise specified), this is a finding.

Fix text

If all user accounts are authenticated by the OS or an enterprise-level authentication/access mechanism, and not by Oracle, no fix to the DBMS is required. If any user accounts are managed by Oracle: Develop, test and implement a password verification function that enforces DoD requirements. (Oracle supplies a sample function called ORA12C_STRONG_VERIFY_FUNCTION, in the script file /RDBMS/ADMIN/utlpwdmg.sql. This can be used as the starting point for a customized function.)

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