Title

The Cisco ASA must be configured to enforce a minimum 15-character password length. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

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 shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Check Content

Review the ASA configuration to verify that it is compliant with this requirement as shown in the example below. password-policy minimum-length 15 If the ASA is not configured to enforce a minimum 15-character password length, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the Cisco ASA to enforce password complexity by requiring a minimum 15-character password length as shown in the example below. ASA(config)# password-policy minimum-length 15

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-239914r879601_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-239914

Group Title: SRG-APP-000164-NDM-000252

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.