In <850FE2CA73BAD01187FA0060976710C2E2B0E3@CCI_EXCHANGE> [log in to unmask] writes:

> Our auditors never even got as far as passwords. They were upset that
> the Logon Prompt MPE XL: would inform potential hackers what system they
> were hacking in to. I'm not sure Auditors take reality into
> consideration.

I've been involved in several security audits (DOD and commercial) and while
we had our share of disagreements, I agree on their point (above).

I created a "post OS update" job that we fired off after any system update
that changed the login prompts to a generic "login:" prompt, and changed
all those "Expected :HELLO [session,]..." messages to generic error messages.
If your system has any outside access (dialup modems or an Internet connect-
ion) then there's really no sense in hand-holding any 14-year-old wanna-be-
hacker through trying to log onto your system.

Another good practice (IMO) is to limit SM-type logins to specific devices.

Yet another is to add a few lines to your OPTION LOGON UDC to do a couple
TELLOPs for every login on a network-device (i.e. a virtual terminal) report-
ing the IP address and hostname that the logon came from. You'll find that
if you ever do have a security breach over a network connection, that this
will very likely be your only means of ever hoping to track down where it
came from. (MPE/iX sets CI variables for you on MPE/iX 5.0+ that provide these
addresses, so TELLOP'ing them is pretty easy. It's not even that hard to write
a script that verifies the login is supposed to be accessible from the source
address/host.)

        -Chris Bartram