STIGUI
V-266935CAT II — Medium severitySV-266935r1039826_rule

AOS must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used.

Rule version ARBA-ND-000257 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-25

Discussion

Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks.

Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is required for all administrative and user accounts on network devices, except for an account of last resort and (where applicable) a root account. Passwords should only be used when MFA using public key infrastructure (PKI) is not available and for the account of last resort and root account.

Check

Verify the AOS configuration with the following command: show aaa password-policy mgmt

If "Minimum number of Special characters" is not set to "1 characters", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure AOS with the following commands: configure terminal aaa password-policy mgmt password-min-special-character 1 exit write memory

Identifiers

Group ID
V-266935
Group title
SRG-APP-000169-NDM-000257
Rule ID
SV-266935r1039826_rule
Check ID
C-70859r1039824_chk
Fix ID
F-70762r1039825_fix