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Password Policy

Note: this component is designated "advanced", which means that objects of this type are not expected to be created or altered in most environments. If you believe that such a change is necessary, you may want to contact UnboundID support in order to understand the potential impact of that change.

Password Policies define a number of password management rules, as well as requirements for authentication processing.

Relations from This Component
Relations to This Component
Properties
dsconfig Usage

Relations from This Component

The following components have a direct aggregation relation from Password Policies:

Relations to This Component

The following components have a direct aggregation relation to Password Policies:

Properties

The properties supported by this managed object are as follows:


Basic Properties: Advanced Properties:
↓ description ↓ skip-validation-for-administrators
↓ password-attribute ↓ allow-multiple-password-values
↓ default-password-storage-scheme ↓ allow-pre-encoded-passwords
↓ deprecated-password-storage-scheme ↓ ignore-duplicate-password-failures
↓ password-validator ↓ state-update-failure-policy
↓ account-status-notification-handler ↓ password-retirement-behavior
↓ allow-user-password-changes ↓ max-retired-password-age
↓ password-change-requires-current-password ↓ enable-debug
↓ force-change-on-add
↓ force-change-on-reset
↓ password-generator
↓ require-secure-authentication
↓ require-secure-password-changes
↓ min-password-age
↓ max-password-age
↓ max-password-reset-age
↓ password-expiration-warning-interval
↓ expire-passwords-without-warning
↓ allow-expired-password-changes
↓ grace-login-count
↓ lockout-failure-count
↓ lockout-duration
↓ lockout-failure-expiration-interval
↓ require-change-by-time
↓ last-login-ip-address-attribute
↓ last-login-time-attribute
↓ last-login-time-format
↓ previous-last-login-time-format
↓ idle-lockout-interval
↓ password-history-count
↓ password-history-duration

Basic Properties

description

Description
A description for this Password Policy
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
A string
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-attribute

Description
Specifies the attribute type used to hold user passwords. This attribute type must be defined in the server schema, and it must have either the user password or auth password syntax.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The name or OID of an attribute type defined in the server schema.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
Yes
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

default-password-storage-scheme

Description
Specifies the names of the password storage schemes that are used to encode clear-text passwords for this password policy.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The DN of any Password Storage Scheme. The referenced password storage schemes must be enabled.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
Yes
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

deprecated-password-storage-scheme

Description
Specifies the names of the password storage schemes that are considered deprecated for this password policy. If a user with this password policy authenticates to the server and his/her password is encoded with a deprecated scheme, those values are removed and replaced with values encoded using the default password storage scheme(s).
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The DN of any Password Storage Scheme. The referenced password storage schemes must be enabled.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-validator

Description
Specifies the names of the password validators that are used with the associated password storage scheme. The password validators are invoked when a user attempts to provide a new password, to determine whether the new password is acceptable.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The DN of any Password Validator. The referenced password validators must be enabled.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

account-status-notification-handler

Description
Specifies the names of the account status notification handlers that are used with the associated password storage scheme.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The DN of any Account Status Notification Handler. The referenced account status notification handlers must be enabled.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

allow-user-password-changes

Description
Indicates whether users can change their own passwords. This check is made in addition to access control evaluation. Both must allow the password change for it to occur.
Default Value
true
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-change-requires-current-password

Description
Indicates whether user password changes must use the password modify extended operation and must include the user's current password before the change is allowed.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

force-change-on-add

Description
Indicates whether users are forced to change their passwords upon first authenticating to the Metrics Engine after their account has been created.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

force-change-on-reset

Description
Indicates whether users are forced to change their passwords if they are reset by an administrator. For this purpose, anyone with permission to change a given user's password other than that user is considered an administrator.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-generator

Description
Specifies the name of the password generator that is used with the associated password policy. This is used in conjunction with the password modify extended operation to generate a new password for a user when none was provided in the request.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The DN of any Password Generator. The referenced password generator must be enabled.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

require-secure-authentication

Description
Indicates whether users with the associated password policy are required to authenticate in a secure manner. This might mean either using a secure communication channel between the client and the server, or using a SASL mechanism that does not expose the credentials.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

require-secure-password-changes

Description
Indicates whether users with the associated password policy are required to change their password in a secure manner that does not expose the credentials.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

min-password-age

Description
Specifies the minimum length of time after a password change before the user is allowed to change the password again. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. This setting can be used to prevent users from changing their passwords repeatedly over a short period of time to flush an old password from the history so that it can be re-used.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

max-password-age

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time that a user can continue using the same password before it must be changed (that is, the password expiration interval). The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds disables password expiration.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

max-password-reset-age

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time that users have to change passwords after they have been reset by an administrator before they become locked. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds disables this feature.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-expiration-warning-interval

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time before a user's password actually expires that the server begins to include warning notifications in bind responses for that user. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds disables the warning interval.
Default Value
5 days
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

expire-passwords-without-warning

Description
Indicates whether the Metrics Engine allows a user's password to expire even if that user has never seen an expiration warning notification. If this property is true, accounts always expire when the expiration time arrives. If this property is false disabled, the user always receives at least one warning notification, and the password expiration is set to the warning time plus the warning interval.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

allow-expired-password-changes

Description
Indicates whether a user whose password is expired is still allowed to change that password using the password modify extended operation.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

grace-login-count

Description
Specifies the number of grace logins that a user is allowed after the account has expired to allow that user to choose a new password. A value of 0 indicates that no grace logins are allowed.
Default Value
0
Allowed Values
An integer value. Lower limit is 0. Upper limit is 2147483647 .
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

lockout-failure-count

Description
Specifies the maximum number of authentication failures that a user is allowed before the account is locked out. A value of 0 indicates that accounts are never locked out due to failed attempts.
Default Value
0
Allowed Values
An integer value. Lower limit is 0. Upper limit is 2147483647 .
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

lockout-duration

Description
Specifies the length of time that an account is locked after too many authentication failures. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds indicates that the account must remain locked until an administrator resets the password.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

lockout-failure-expiration-interval

Description
Specifies the length of time before an authentication failure is no longer counted against a user for the purposes of account lockout. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds indicates that the authentication failures must never expire. The failure count is always cleared upon a successful authentication.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

require-change-by-time

Description
Specifies the time by which all users with the associated password policy must change their passwords. The value is expressed in a generalized time format. If this time is equal to the current time or is in the past, then all users are required to change their passwords immediately. The behavior of the server in this mode is identical to the behavior observed when users are forced to change their passwords after an administrative reset.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
A valid timestamp in generalized time form (for example, a value of "20070409185811Z" indicates a value of April 9, 2007 at 6:58:11 pm GMT).
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

last-login-ip-address-attribute

Description
Specifies the name or OID of the attribute type that is used to hold the IP address of the client from which the user last authenticated. This attribute type must be defined in the Metrics Engine schema and must either be defined as an operational attribute or must be allowed by the set of objectClasses for all users with the associated password policy. The ds-pwp-last-login-ip-address attribute has been defined in the server schema for this purpose.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
The name or OID of an attribute type defined in the server schema.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

last-login-time-attribute

Description
Specifies the name or OID of the attribute type that is used to hold the last login time for users with the associated password policy. This attribute type must be defined in the Metrics Engine schema and must either be defined as an operational attribute or must be allowed by the set of objectClasses for all users with the associated password policy.
Default Value
ds-pwp-last-login-time
Allowed Values
The name or OID of an attribute type defined in the server schema.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

last-login-time-format

Description
Specifies the format string that is used to generate the last login time value for users with the associated password policy. Last login time values will be written using the UTC (also known as GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time) time zone. This format string conforms to the syntax described in the API documentation for the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class. Common values for usage include:
  • yyyyMMddHHmmss'Z' -- Generalized time format with second-level accuracy.
  • yyyyMMddHHmmss.SSS'Z' -- Generalized time format with millisecond-level accuracy.
  • yyyyMMdd -- Only include the date but not the time. This format will cause the last login time to be updated at most once a day for each user.

Default Value
None
Allowed Values
Any valid format string that can be used with the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

previous-last-login-time-format

Description
Specifies the format string(s) that might have been used with the last login time at any point in the past for users associated with the password policy. These values are used to make it possible to parse previous values, but are not used to set new values. The format strings conform to the syntax described in the API documentation for the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class.
Default Value
None
Allowed Values
Any valid format string that can be used with the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

idle-lockout-interval

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time that an account may remain idle (that is, the associated user does not authenticate to the server) before that user is locked out. The value of this attribute is an integer followed by a unit of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. A value of 0 seconds indicates that idle accounts are not automatically locked out. This feature is available only if the last login time is maintained. If either or both of the last-login-time-attribute or last-login-time-format properties are undefined, then idle account lockout will not be enforced.
For accounts which do not have a last login time value, the password changed time, or failing that the account creation time, will be used. If none of that information is available, then the user will not be allowed to authenticate. It is strongly recommended that the server be allowed to run for a period of time with last login time tracking enabled (i.e., values for both last-login-time-attribute and last-login-time-format config properties) to ensure that users have a last login time before enabling idle account lockout.
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
Last login time tracking is required for idle account lockout to work properly. If you are enabling idle account lockout, then you should ensure that the last-login-time-attribute and last-login-time-format properties are also defined and that last login time tracking has been enabled long enough so that user accounts have had time to be marked with last login times. Ideally, last login time tracking should be enabled for at least as long as the idle lockout interval to ensure that users are not incorrectly locked out merely because their accounts do not have last login time information.

password-history-count

Description
Specifies the maximum number of former passwords to maintain in the password history. When choosing a new password, the proposed password is checked to ensure that it does not match the current password, nor any other password in the history list. A value of zero indicates that either no password history is to be maintained (if the password history duration has a value of zero seconds), or that there is no maximum number of passwords to maintain in the history (if the password history duration has a value greater than zero seconds).
Default Value
0
Allowed Values
An integer value. Lower limit is 0. Upper limit is 2147483647 .
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-history-duration

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time that passwords remain in the password history. When choosing a new password, the proposed password is checked to ensure that it does not match the current password, nor any other password in the history list. A value of zero seconds indicates that either no password history is to be maintained (if the password history count has a value of zero), or that there is no maximum duration for passwords in the history (if the password history count has a value greater than zero).
Default Value
0 seconds
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 0 seconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 seconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action


Advanced Properties

skip-validation-for-administrators (Advanced Property)

Description
Indicates whether passwords set by administrators are allowed to bypass the password validation process that is required for user password changes.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

allow-multiple-password-values (Advanced Property)

Description
Indicates whether user entries can have multiple distinct values for the password attribute. This is potentially dangerous because many mechanisms used to change the password do not work well with such a configuration. If multiple password values are allowed, then any of them can be used to authenticate, and they are all subject to the same policy constraints.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

allow-pre-encoded-passwords (Advanced Property)

Description
Indicates whether users can change their passwords by providing a pre-encoded value. This can cause a security risk because the clear-text version of the password is not known and therefore validation checks cannot be applied to it.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

ignore-duplicate-password-failures (Advanced Property)

Description
Indicates whether to ignore subsequent authentication failures using the same password as an earlier failed authentication attempt (within the time frame defined by the lockout failure expiration interval). If this option is "true", then multiple failed attempts using the same password will be considered only a single failure. If this option is "false", then any failure will be tracked regardless of whether it used the same password as an earlier attempt. This will only be applicable to simple bind attempts, or when using the password modify extended operation with an old password. It will not be used with SASL authentication.
Default Value
true
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

state-update-failure-policy (Advanced Property)

Description
Specifies how the server deals with the inability to update password policy state information during an authentication attempt. In particular, this property can be used to control whether an otherwise successful bind operation fails if a failure occurs while attempting to update password policy state information (for example, to clear a record of previous authentication failures or to update the last login time). It can also be used to control whether to reject a bind request if it is known ahead of time that it will not be possible to update the authentication failure times in the event of an unsuccessful bind attempt (for example, if the backend writability mode is disabled).
Default Value
reactive
Allowed Values
ignore - If a bind attempt would otherwise be successful, then do not reject it if a problem occurs while attempting to update the password policy state information for the user.

reactive - Even if a bind attempt would otherwise be successful, reject it if a problem occurs while attempting to update the password policy state information for the user.

proactive - Proactively reject any bind attempt if it is known ahead of time that it would not be possible to update the user's password policy state information.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

password-retirement-behavior (Advanced Property)

Description
Specifies the conditions under which the server may retire a user's current password in the course of setting a new password for that user (whether via a modify operation or a password modify extended operation). If a password is retired, then it will remain usable for a period of time (as specified by the max-retired-password-age property) in addition to the new password for that user. This feature makes it possible to gracefully change the password for a user in a way that allows any applications which may have been configured with that user's password to continue using the former password until they can be updated to use the new password instead.
Note that retired password functionality cannot be used if the allow-multiple-password-values property is configured with a value of true.
Default Value
Passwords will not be retired for any kind of password change or reset.
Allowed Values
retire-on-self-change - Whenever users change their own password, their former password will automatically be retired unless the request includes a purge password request control. Note that if the request includes a critical retire password request control, then the operation will only succeed if this property also has a value of retire-on-request-with-control.

retire-on-administrative-reset - Whenever a user's password is changed by someone else, their former password will automatically be retired unless the request includes a purge password request control. Note that if the request includes a critical retire password request control, then the operation will only succeed if this property also has a value of retire-on-request-with-control.

retire-on-request-with-control - If a password change request (whether a self change or administrative reset) includes the retire password request control, the user's former password will automatically be retired.
Multi-Valued
Yes
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

max-retired-password-age (Advanced Property)

Description
Specifies the maximum length of time that a retired password should be considered valid and may be used to authenticate to the server. If a user account contains a retired password that has exceeded its maximum age, then that retired password may be removed from the user's entry the next time the user attempts to authenticate.
Default Value
1d
Allowed Values
A duration. Lower limit is 1 milliseconds. Upper limit is 2147483647 milliseconds.
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action

enable-debug (Advanced Property)

Description
Indicates whether to enable debugging for the password policy state.
Default Value
false
Allowed Values
true
false
Multi-Valued
No
Required
No
Admin Action Required
None. Modification requires no further action


dsconfig Usage

To list the configured Password Policies:

dsconfig list-password-policies
     [--property {propertyName}] ...

To view the configuration for an existing Password Policy:

dsconfig get-password-policy-prop
     --policy-name {name}
     [--tab-delimited]
     [--script-friendly]
     [--property {propertyName}] ...

To update the configuration for an existing Password Policy:

dsconfig set-password-policy-prop
     --policy-name {name}
     (--set|--add|--remove) {propertyName}:{propertyValue}
     [(--set|--add|--remove) {propertyName}:{propertyValue}] ...

To create a new Password Policy:

dsconfig create-password-policy
     --policy-name {name}
     --set password-attribute:{propertyValue}
     --set default-password-storage-scheme:{propertyValue}
     [--set {propertyName}:{propertyValue}] ...

To delete an existing Password Policy:

dsconfig delete-password-policy
     --policy-name {name}