CWE-262: Not Using Password Aging | Glexia
CWE-262 (Not Using Password Aging) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-262: Not Using Password Aging
Not Using Password Aging represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity: As passwords age, the probability that they are compromised grows.
Developer Pattern
CWE-262 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-262, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-262: Not Using Password Aging
The product does not have a mechanism in place for managing password aging.
Password aging (or password rotation) is a policy that forces users to change their passwords after a defined time period passes, such as every 30 or 90 days. Without mechanisms such as aging, users might not change their passwords in a timely manner. Note that while password aging was once considered an important security feature, it has since fallen out of favor by many, because it is not as effective against modern threats compared to other mechanisms such as slow hashes. In addition, forcing frequent changes can unintentionally encourage users to select less-secure passwords. However, password aging is still in use due to factors such as compliance requirements, e.g., Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- A system does not enforce the changing of passwords every certain period.
Remediation
- Architecture and Design: As part of a product's design, require users to change their passwords regularly and avoid reusing previous passwords.
- Implementation: Developers might disable clipboard paste operations into password fields as a way to discourage users from pasting a password into a clipboard. However, this might encourage users to choose less-secure passwords that are easier to type, and it can reduce the usability of password managers [REF-1294].
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.