The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.

From AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

Associated with IA controls: IAIA-2, IAIA-1

Associated with: CCI-000200

SV-38679r1_rule The system must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.

Vulnerability discussion

If a user, or root, used the same password continuously or was allowed to change it back shortly after being forced to change it to something else, it would provide a potential intruder with the opportunity to keep guessing at one user's password until it was guessed correctly.

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Fix text

Use the chsec command to configure the system to prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations. # chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a histsize=5 # chuser histsize=5 < user id >

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