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Account Lockouts
12 Oct 2003:
Some of you may have noticed that you can't logon to Windows 2000
because your account is locked out. For those of you
attempting to login to
the Repository Server (cssgate) and other Unix systems,
you may notice that the system keeps prompting you for a password, even
though you've entered it correctly; your Windows account, which
authenticates you to Unix systems, could either be locked out or
the password has expired.
In both cases, the account lockout security policy
may be responsible. It is working to protect your account from
being hacked into. The policy is set to
temporarily refuse
further login attempts after a few unsuccessful login attempts.
After a few minutes (currently, about ten (10) minutes, but
this may change), it should allow logins again.
Account lockout is most often triggered by:
- typing the wrong password a few times.
If you've forgotten your password, please see one of the lab
staff.
Otherwise, see lab staff to unlock it immediately,
or, outside of
lab staff office hours,
please wait and try again.
- some computer program or person attempting to
guess your password.
This is not a mistake and is a "bad thing"; someone could try
to impersonate you, or copy or delete your files by using your account.
This is why it is important to use long, not-easily-guessable passwords.
Other policies enforce requirements for long passwords and
expire the passwords after a few months.
The labs computers are constantly being scanned
for vulnerabilities from computers both inside and
outside of the UW. Attempting to use existing accounts
is one of the easiest ways to start to control a computer. We
look into these attempts and try to find the source and report them
to the owners of the computers used, as they may not be aware
that their computers have been "compromised".
Some unauthorized login attempts could be blocked by
better network control. We have plans to do this, but in the
meantime, please follow the above suggestions.
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