238 Managing Network Vulnerability Assessment
Urgency Rating*****
Risk
Sending usernames and passwords across the network in cleartext allows an
attacker to log onto the resource. The systems affected by this are all routers
and switches, as well as all the Sun Solaris systems. Any user with a sniffer
could potentially access any resource sending usernames and passwords in
cleartext.
Recommendations
There are two recommendations to resolve this issue. The first is to install
an Identification and Authentication (I&A) service that supports two-factor
authentication. The one-time passwords (tokens) generated by these types
of systems mean that even if the password is noticed on the wire, the
password will have changed at the next log-in. A second solution ...