Originally posted by: JohnMiller31

I have a p520 that is running AIX 5.3 that I'm just starting to work with. I'm connecting up to the ASMI web interface using HMC1 and when I login with the default admin user I get a menu with no options other than Change Password. The system information is displayed , I've tried multiple browsers and I'm very certain it's not a browser issue. This might be something very obvious and if it is I apologize but I've looked through every manual I can find and this strange menu is not mentioned anywhere. From what I've read I should be seeing the menu with all the options. I've attached a screen shot of what I'm talking about.

Thanks for your help
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Originally posted by: ColombianJoker

Do the obvious thing, little grasshopper
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Originally posted by: JohnMiller31

While that was not a very helpful answer I had already figured it out. Unless you change the default admin password you can't get anywhere except changing the password.

So here's a related question; who at IBM thought this was a secure or useful thing? If you've already used the default password to login then there is no added security in making you change it before you can do horrible things to your system. If I'm an attacker smart enough to know about ASMI then obviously I know about changing the password and that's what I would do before I screwed everything up.
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Originally posted by: jklotz

The ASMI can be used without the HMC; and I don't think it's a bad design choice to make it mandatory to change the password of the adminisatrive user before being able to use that ASMI. If you rely on sysadmins to use actual passwords later, you can be sure the couple admin/admin will remain alive for a while.

(Instead of that they set it to abc1234 and everybody's happy).

During the inital discovery of a managed system, the HMC leaves the opportunity to change the admin password, I'm not sure you ever need to do it again if you actually change it at that step.
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Originally posted by: JohnMiller31

I don't disagree, it's an excellent idea to make you change the default password. However what it should do then is block you from going any further until you change the password. I guess it's a matter of symantics; I think it's silly and pointless to let you actually login using the default password and do things like change other users passwords including the admin before changing the default admin password. Whoever thought of this made themselves feel good by preventing other dangerous options from being available if you are using the default password but that's just a smokescreen for a bad design. It's not a perimeter defense if you are let inside the perimeter.
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