Prevent usage of previously used password 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 end result is a password that is not changed as per policy requirements.

[Prevent_reuse_the_last_5_passwords]

To check if the password policy is configured to prevent users from reusing one of their five previously used passwords, run the following command: sudo pwpolicy getpolicy | tr ' ' ' ' | grep usingHistory If the result is not 'usingHistory=5', and password policy is not controlled by a directory server, this is a finding.