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alphanumeric password

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by marty2001

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I have looked in Active Directory and global policies and local domain; local computer and domain security policies to see if I can force users to have an alphanumeric password.
I can not find out how to do this. Can anyone point me in the right direction.

regards
Marty

6 replies

by aaron_wurthmann

In AD admin go to the domain or the OU, right click on it and select properties. Then click on the "Group Policy" tab, select the policy then click "Edit". Drop down the "Computer Config..." tree and then "Windows Settings" then "Account Policies" and then "Password Policy".

I typically enable the "Password must meet complixities requirement" and a few other options.

by marty2001

Hi, I had seen that option but was unsure what level of complexity is required. Do you know?
I will accept your next reply
regards
Marty

by aaron_wurthmann

Oh yeah another metod with the same results would be:

On a domain controller go to Administrative Tools and select domain security policies as you have above. Again the setting you are looking for is "Passwords must be complexity requirements".
An example of a complex password is:
Apr~09 <- As you can see there is a cap a special charatcter and numerials as well.

by aaron_wurthmann

oops I wasn't done yet.

I generally tell my users to make their passwords complex but easy to remember, more examples:

Company!
Apr~08
June1972
A@r0n
Qwerty!
h@x0r5
5ux0r5
w1nd0z3
p@55w0rd
+3chR3pu8l1c
1_+h1nk_40u_63+_+h3_1de@

by marty2001

Thanks for your time Aaron
I found this as wellhttp://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q161/9/90.ASP
MORE INFORMATION
Passfilt.dll implements the following password policy:

Passwords must be at least six (6) characters long.Passwords must contain characters from at least three (3) of the following four (4) classes:

Description Examples
-------------------------------------------------------------------

English upper case letters A, B, C, ... Z
English lower case letters a, b, c, ... z
Westernized Arabic numerals 0, 1, 2, ... 9
Non-alphanumeric ("special characters") such as punctuation symbols

Passwords may not contain your user name or any part of your full name.

These requirements are hard-coded in the Passfilt.dll file and cannot be changed through the user interface or registry. If you wish to raise or lower these requirements, you must write your own .dll and implement it in the same fashion as the Microsoft version that is available with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2.
How to Install Strong Password Filtering

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