AOSX-13-000590 - The macOS system must enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Information

The minimum password length must be set to 15 characters. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. The use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

This setting is enforced using the 'Passcode Policy' configuration profile.

Note: Updates to password restrictions must be thoroughly evaluated in a test environment. Mistakes in configuration may block password change and local user creation operations, as well as lock out all local users, including administrators.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Apple_OS_X_10-13_V2R5_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1)(a), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, Rule-ID|SV-214881r609363_rule, STIG-ID|AOSX-13-000590, STIG-Legacy|SV-96355, STIG-Legacy|V-81641, Vuln-ID|V-214881

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 4804d71c864be3b8d5646b7ec62d332f5b9cf95a9b6d89167c250912be7d4be6