The MQ Appliance network device must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

From IBM MQ Appliance v9.0 NDM Security Technical Implementation Guide

Associated with: CCI-000200

SV-89625r1_rule The MQ Appliance network device must prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations.

Vulnerability discussion

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. To meet password policy requirements, passwords need to be changed at specific policy-based intervals. If the MQ Appliance network device allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements. For LDAP authentication, the authentication server is responsible for enforcing password policy. When the LDAP server is not available, password policy is enforced by the MQ Appliance's RBM Password Policy.

Check content

Log on to the MQ Appliance WebGUI as a privileged user. Go to Administration (gear icon) >> Access >> RBM Settings. Verify the Authentication Method is set to LDAP. Expand Password Policy. Verify the (local) MQ Password Policy Reuse History is set to a minimum of "5". If MQ is not set to LDAP authentication or if the local password policy is not configured to meet the requirement, this is a finding.

Fix text

Log on to the MQ Appliance WebGUI as a privileged user. Go to Administration (gear icon) >> Access> > RBM Settings. Set Authentication Method to LDAP. Configure LDAP server connection as required. Expand Password Policy. In Password Policy, check the Control Reuse check box and set reuse history to a minimum of "5".

Pro Tips

Lavender hyperlinks in small type off to the right (of CSS class id, if you view the page source) point to globally unique URIs for each document and item. Copy the link location and paste anywhere you need to talk unambiguously about these things.

You can obtain data about documents and items in other formats. Simply provide an HTTP header Accept: text/turtle or Accept: application/rdf+xml.