- Default behavior in modern operating systems and browsers; verify custom and internally-built applications rather than assuming.
- Check kiosk and shop-floor HMI screens, where custom UIs most often echo secrets.
3.5.11OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWDERIVED REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.5.11 — Authentication feedback obscuring
3.5 Identification and Authentication · NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 · The heading label is this site's navigational shorthand; the official language is the statement below.
Official requirement statement (verbatim)
Obscure feedback of authentication information.
NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems ↗NIST SP 800-171A — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI ↗Independent interpretation
What this requirement is after
Login screens mask what is typed. Feedback during authentication must not disclose the secret to shoulder-surfers or screen captures — the familiar dots in the password field, and error messages that do not confirm which half of a credential pair was wrong.
Mapped practices
Brilliant at the Basics practices that support this requirement
No practice maps to this requirement — deliberately.
The campaign’s twenty practices are a priority list, not a control catalog, and none of them works this requirement’s substance directly. It still applies to you if it is in your contract’s scope: address it through your own implementation and the related artifacts below, and treat the absence of a mapping here as honesty, not permission to skip it.
Doing the work
Implementation considerations and evidence
- A dated check of authentication screens across in-scope applications, including any custom UIs
- A remediation note for any application found echoing credentials, with the fix date
Artifacts
Templates and worksheets with a mapped relationship
No artifact in the library names this requirement yet. The library index groups everything by category and practice.
The other revision
Where this lands in Rev. 3
Provenance
Sources and review status
| Primary sources | NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems · NIST SP 800-171A — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI |
|---|---|
| Review status | Pending NIST SME review |
| Content version | 1.0 |
| Updated |