Password Aging with Long Expiration

The product supports password aging, but the expiration period is too long.


Description

Password aging (or password rotation) is a policy that forces users to change their passwords after a defined time period passes, such as every 30 or 90 days. A long expiration provides more time for attackers to conduct password cracking before users are forced to change to a new password.

Note that while password aging was once considered an important security feature, it has since fallen out of favor by many, because it is not as effective against modern threats compared to other mechanisms such as slow hashes. In addition, forcing frequent changes can unintentionally encourage users to select less-secure passwords. However, password aging is still in use due to factors such as compliance requirements, e.g., Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Demonstrations

The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.

Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.

Example One

A system requires the changing of passwords every five years.

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Access Control

Weaknesses in this category are related to access control.

Authenticate Actors

Weaknesses in this category are related to the design and architecture of authentication components of the system. Frequently these deal with verifying the entity is i...

SFP Secondary Cluster: Insecure Authentication Policy

This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Insecure Authentication Policy cluster.

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

CWE Cross-section

This view contains a selection of weaknesses that represent the variety of weaknesses that are captured in CWE, at a level of abstraction that is likely to be useful t...

Weaknesses Introduced During Design

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during design.


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