Vulnerability Discussion

If temporary user accounts remain active when no longer needed or for an excessive period, these accounts may be used to gain unauthorized access. To mitigate this risk, automated termination of all temporary accounts must be set upon account creation.

Temporary accounts are established as part of normal account activation procedures when there is a need for short-term accounts without the demand for immediacy in account activation.

If temporary accounts are used, the operating system must be configured to automatically terminate these types of accounts after a DoD-defined time period of 72 hours.

To address access requirements, many operating systems may be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements.

Check

Review temporary user accounts for expiration dates.

Determine if temporary user accounts are used and identify any that exist. If none exist, this is NA.

Domain Controllers:

Open "PowerShell".

Enter "Search-ADAccount -AccountExpiring | FT Name, AccountExpirationDate".

If "AccountExpirationDate" has not been defined within 72 hours for any temporary user account, this is a finding.

Member servers and standalone or nondomain-joined systems:

Open "Command Prompt".

Run "Net user [username]", where [username] is the name of the temporary user account.

If "Account expires" has not been defined within 72 hours for any temporary user account, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure temporary user accounts to automatically expire within 72 hours.

Domain accounts can be configured with an account expiration date, under "Account" properties.

Local accounts can be configured to expire with the command "Net user [username] /expires:[mm/dd/yyyy]", where [username] is the name of the temporary user account.

Delete any temporary user accounts that are no longer necessary.