Vulnerability Discussion

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. If the information system or application allows the user to consecutively reuse their password when that password has exceeded its defined lifetime, the result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

Check

Verify the macOS system is configured to prohibit password reuse for a minimum of five generations with the following command:

/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPConfigurationProfileDataType | /usr/bin/grep "pinHistory"

pinHistory = 5;

If "pinHistory" is not set to "5" or greater, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the macOS system to prohibit password reuse for five generations by installing the "Passcode Policy" configuration profile.