All,

Our program is currently working through the architecting of the next release, 
and the decision point is upon us WRT OS version - RHEL6 or RHEL7.  One 
significant factor (at least from a cybersecurity perspective, is the ability 
to efficiently / effectively conduct STIG reviews via the SCAP tools.

This said, is there any place I could ascertain the projected release of the 
RHEL 7 Benchmarks?

I apologize if this is not the appropriate venue for such a question, or if it 
is so obviously in front of me I should already know, but honestly I have not 
closely monitored this feed of late, since I have been stuck in the RHEL 5 
world and trying to keep the system secure in that context.

Thanks,


From: Shawn Wells [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 10:56 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Loss of EL7 STIG profiles


On 7/20/17 3:57 AM, Chuck Atkins wrote:
I've been using the SCAP Security Guide for the past two years to manage the 
lock down and deployment of EL7 machines in our lab and one of the best 
features I've seen is the move from a single "STIG for Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux" profile targeting servers to three separate profiles for Server, Server 
with GUI, and Workstation.  I just used the EL7 STIG Workstation profile this 
week with the SSG in the EL7 repos.  It's extremely useful to me since all of 
our machines are used as workstations, not servers, so to have a profile that 
works out of the box without needing to do excessive customization, and in 
turn, justification of said customizations is very handy.
So imagine my surprise and dismay when I used the most recent release from the 
Copr repo and discovered that my convenient separate profiles were now all gone 
to align with the recently released singular DISA server profile.  Are there 
any plans with the various contributors involved (RH, DoD, others, etc.) to 
re-work the server STIG profile again to have a separate upstream-supported 
STIG profile for Workstation usage?  Having it in previous releases has proven 
to be an extremely useful feature and I would hate to see it regress back to 
"Linux is just for servers".

The profile split started when DISA wanted to include desktop configuration 
checks in their RHEL7 STIG. In theory this was ideal, however no desktop 
content existed. DISA wanted to independently verify all desktop hardening 
recommendations from DoD, NSA, Red Hat, and those that were already in SSG. 
This was taking months... IIRC, over 6+ months were spent waiting for DISA to 
validate various controls. In phone calls, we went back and forth over what 
should and should not be included. Agreements that were made somehow ended up 
not being included in DISA's incremental drafts -- and we'd have to start the 
dialogs all over.

We got to the point where our collaborators at DISA agreed to release a "RHEL7 
Base STIG," and a future "RHEL7 Base+Desktop" would be released at a future 
date. This would allow something to be published rapidly. Our DISA 
collaborators agreed on this approach and ran it up their management chain. 
That was when (in SSG) we split the profiles.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later, we learned that someone in upper management 
at DISA disagreed. They decided waiting for all desktop settings to be included 
in DISA's content was the right approach. In part this is understandable... 
they knew getting an incremental DISA STIG release would take at least a year 
because of their processes.

Ultimately DISA ended up releasing a combined Server+Desktop STIG. Perhaps due 
to the incredible pressure to just release something, they left off dozens of 
desktop related checks. Top of mind examples:
- Blank the screen saver
- Use encrypted X11 forwarding
- Enforce login retries when using a GUI
- Disable WiFi
- Disable geolocation

DISA stated they would "rebase" their content on recommendations provided to 
them by DISA, NIST, NSA, and Red Hat. That was over 6 months ago now and no 
updates are planned. If having DISA release updated content is important to 
you, I'd recommend reaching out to them directly.

For now, the "stig-rhel7-disa" profile aligns to DISA's content..... even if 
their requirement coverage is incomplete. The SSG content does differ from 
DISA's in that we use correct file paths to evaluate configuration settings and 
ensured the values (e.g. on/off) are appropriate. There are something like 
50-75 bugs in DISA's content that have been fixed (or never even present) in 
SSG. You can find that profile here:
https://github.com/OpenSCAP/scap-security-guide/blob/master/RHEL/7/input/profiles/stig-rhel7-disa.xml

In the mean time, we've moved forward with other DoD elements to align a US 
Government-wide baseline that incorporated DoD, Intelligence, and Civilian 
configuration requirements. That is reflected in the ospp-rhel7 profile:
https://github.com/OpenSCAP/scap-security-guide/blob/master/RHEL/7/input/profiles/ospp-rhel7.xml

Which maps to the following

This baseline implements configuration requirements from the following 
documents:
















- Committee on National Security Systems Instruction No. 1253 (CNSSI 1253)







- NIST Controlled Unclassified Information (NIST 800-171)







- NIST 800-53 control selections for MODERATE impact systems (NIST 800-53)







- U.S. Government Configuration Baseline (USGCB)







- NIAP Protection Profile for General Purpose Operating Systems v4.0 (OSPP v4.0)







- DISA Operating System Security Requirements Guide (OS SRG)






The ospp-rhel7 profile contains *all* the desktop checks that currently exist, 
whereas the DISA profile leaves them off (because DISA leaves them off in their 
content). Hopefully it'll be useful for you.
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