The operating system must enforce the organization-defined time period during which the limit of consecutive invalid access attempts by a user is counted.

From Apple OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) Workstation STIG

Associated with: CCI-001452

SV-65629r1_rule The operating system must enforce the organization-defined time period during which the limit of consecutive invalid access attempts by a user is counted.

Vulnerability discussion

By limiting the number of failed login attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute forcing, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account.

Check content

To check if the password policy is configured to disabled an account within 15 minutes of failed attempts, run the following command: sudo pwpolicy -getglobalpolicy | tr " " "\n" | grep minutesUntilFailedLoginReset If the result is not "minutesUntilFailedLoginReset=15", this is a finding. This is NA for machines bound to a directory server.

Fix text

To set the password policy, run the following command: sudo pwpolicy setglobalpolicy "minutesUntilFailedLoginReset=15"

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