On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 at 01:14, roscoe5 <
[email protected]> wrote:

> It is entirely possible, near the end of a migration, to change a user’s
> password to something unknown to said user, and hopefully random and
> unique. Thereby effectively eliminating the use of the password while still
> technically having one in the RACF database.
> I could see some value in this if you want to keep the 8-character option
> open, but it is not a good idea to me.
> Using ALTUSER NOPASSWORD would eliminate the pw entirely.
>

One of our password sync/reset products has the option to change the
password to a random value upon setting a phrase from a remote system (a
user or admin change on e.g. Windows, or a change from our self-service
reset GUI), but it's largely gone out of use because, as you say, just
removing the password with an ALU is better for most purposes. I believe
some customers are still using the random option rather than the
remove-it-entirely one, but I'm not sure why. The opposite (remove a phrase
when a password is set) is also possible, but realistically nobody is
migrating their user base from pass phrases to passwords...

Tony H.

On Sun, Oct 27, 2024 at 11:01 PM, Dave Gibney <[
> [email protected]](mailto:On Sun, Oct 27,
> 2024 at 11:01 PM, Dave Gibney <<a href=)> wrote:
>
> > I was my understanding that RACF ids with passphrases all still had
> passwords, perhaps unknown to anyone and that it wasn't possible to not
> have passwords.
> >
> > I could of course be wrong
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On
> >> Behalf Of Alan Altmark
> >> Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2024 7:45 PM
> >> To: [email protected]
> >> Subject: Re: Passphases
> >>
> >> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 23:27:38 +0200, Radoslaw Skorupka
> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> >BTW: a user can have *both* passphrase and password. The second one can
> >> >be understood as emergency one.
> >>
> >> I beg to disagree. Having the password undoes any enhanced security you
> get
> >> from having a phrase.
> >>
> >> The only reason a user should have a password is if they are using a
> portal that
> >> does not have support for phrases, or you migrating to phrases. But at
> some
> >> point, you need to upgrade the portal and/or remove the PASSWORD.
> >>
> >> Alan Altmark
> >> IBM z/VM Development
> >>
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