New passwords must be required to differ from old passwords by more than four characters.

From Oracle Database 11g Instance STIG

Part of DBMS password change variance

SV-24387r3_rule New passwords must be required to differ from old passwords by more than four characters.

Vulnerability discussion

Changing passwords frequently can thwart password-guessing attempts or re-establish protection of a compromised DBMS account. Minor changes to passwords may not accomplish this as password guessing may be able to continue to build on previous guesses or the new password may be easily guessed using the old password.

Check content

If no DBMS accounts authenticate using passwords, this check is Not a Finding. Confirm that database profiles specify a password verify function. From SQL*Plus: select profile, limit from dba_profiles where resource_name='PASSWORD_VERIFY_FUNCTION' and limit not in ('NULL', 'DEFAULT') order by profile; If no rows are listed, this is a Finding. Review the code for the password verify function or have the DBA demonstrate a password change to ensure that the function requires new passwords to differ from old passwords by more than 4 characters. If reviewing code, logic similar to the following should be discovered: -- Check if the password differs from the previous password -- by more than 4 characters if old_password is not null then differ:=length(old_password) - length(password); if abs(differ) <= 4 then if length(password) < length(old_password) then m:=length(password); else m:=length(old_password); end if; differ:=abs(differ); for i in 1..m loop if substr(password,i,1) != substr(old_password,i,1) then differ:=differ + 1; end if; end loop; if differ <= 4 then raise_application_error(-20004, 'Password should differ by more than 4 characters'); end if; end if; end if; If any password_verify_function routines do not check for a difference of more than 4 characters, this is a Finding.

Fix text

Define and apply a password_verify_function for all profiles where passwords are used to authenticate accounts. See Fix information for DG0079 to create a password_verify_function that meets STIG requirements.

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