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Printable Version: RFC1244.PDF
RFC 1244 Site Security Handbook July 1991
carefully. Users may forget passwords and not be able to get onto
the system. The standard procedure is to assign the user a new
password. Care should be taken to make sure that the real person
is requesting the change and gets the new password. One common
trick used by intruders is to call or message to a system
administrator and request a new password. Some external form of
verification should be used before the password is assigned. At
some sites, users are required to show up in person with ID.
There may also be times when many passwords need to be changed.
If a system is compromised by an intruder, the intruder may be
able to steal a password file and take it off the system. Under
these circumstances, one course of action is to change all
passwords on the system. Your site should have procedures for how
this can be done quickly and efficiently. What course you choose
may depend on the urgency of the problem. In the case of a known
attack with damage, you may choose to forcibly disable all
accounts and assign users new passwords before they come back onto
the system. In some places, users are sent a message telling them
that they should change their passwords, perhaps within a certain
time period. If the password isn't changed before the time period
expires, the account is locked.
Users should be aware of what the standard procedure is for
passwords when a security event has occurred. One well-known
spoof reported by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)
involved messages sent to users, supposedly from local system
administrators, requesting them to immediately change their
password to a new value provided in the message [24]. These
messages were not from the administrators, but from intruders
trying to steal accounts. Users should be warned to immediately
report any suspicious requests such as this to site
administrators.
4.4 Configuration Management Procedures
Configuration management is generally applied to the software
development process. However, it is certainly applicable in a
operational sense as well. Consider that the since many of the
system level programs are intended to enforce the security policy, it
is important that these be "known" as correct. That is, one should
not allow system level programs (such as the operating system, etc.)
to be changed arbitrarily. At very least, the procedures should
state who is authorized to make changes to systems, under what
circumstances, and how the changes should be documented.
In some environments, configuration management is also desirable as
applied to physical configuration of equipment. Maintaining valid
Site Security Policy Handbook Working Group [Page 60]