Any plans to incorporate RHEL8 CIS standards?

[tkolstee]

The CIS Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Benchmark v 1.0.0 has been released. I was wondering if you had any plans to either create a new role or enhance this one to enforce both RHEL7 and RHEL8 benchmarks.

[foley-j]

There are a good number of differences between the two, but mostly the same with just different control numbers.

[benformosa]

@KelfeinX has a fork working on updating to the RHEL 8 benchmark: https://github.com/KelfeinX/RHEL8-CIS

[foleyjohnm]

@benformosa @kelfeinX It would be nice if he could enable issues so some discussion on some things could take place.

One of the biggest issues I see with the RHEL8 benchmarks is the firewall (iptables vs. NFtables). It seems to me that the preferred way if NFtables, but the benchmark is incredibly vague and confusing. It almost seems like the benchmark should be sending users down two paths (NFtables OR iptables), but it almost seems like they want you to run both.

[lmayorga1980]

This would be nice.

[georgenalen]

Hello, I wanted to reach out and let you know that this issue is being closed. We have re-worked the role and want to start with a fresh issues list with this latest version. There was a post in the Ansible-Lockdown google group (https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-lockdown) with the details of the changes that are coming. Please checkout the thread titled RHEL 7 CIS and STIG Changes for all of the details, I also have the message pasted at below. Please as you use the latest version and open issue tickets as you find them, it is the best way for us to improve the role for everyone. Thank you for being part of the community and providing awareness of problems or advice on improvement. Reporting is a huge part of improving this project.

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Hello, Thank you to everyone in the Ansible-Lockdown community who has contributed to RHEL7 STIG/CIS. Our team at MindPoint Group has been working with the entirety of the Ansible-Lockdown project, and we have some significant updates for both RHEL 7 STIG and CIS. With these updates, some larger changes have been made. I have these changes/updates outlined below. Testing:

1. CI/CD - We have implemented some automated testing pipelines to test pull requests into the devel and main branches. With the current workflow, the community will PR into the devel branch (never the main branch) for review by the administrators. When your PR is created, the first check will remain the DCO check. The second check is a functional testing pipeline that will automatically perform a functional test of the branch the PR is initiated from. Once both tests pass, someone from the Administrator Team will review the changes and merge them into the devel branch. From there, an additional review is completed before the devel branch is merged into the main branch. Only the Admin Team will perform PRs/merges into the main branch. There is also an automated pipeline for PRs from devel to main. Please do not edit the .github/workflows files since those are used as part of the pipeline.
2. Compliance Checking – MindPoint Group has been working to create our own compliance audit scan tool. The tool uses a goss framework executable to run custom checks that we have created. The goal is to provide a more thorough check for control compliance and decrease the number of false positives/negatives. For example, it will check the configuration file related to the control and as well as checking if that configuration is active. With a smarter scan, we can hopefully identify attempts to trick scanners as well (for example stacking a parameter in a config file where the first instance is enabled and second disabled. Most audit tools search for the first instance but the application might look for the last instance of the parameter, thus making the scanning tool think it's enabled). In testing, we have found that our audit scan runs significantly faster than other audit tools, reducing audit times. Our audit tool and profiles will have their own repositories in the Ansible-Lockdown org, but within the remediation role there will be an integrated way to incorporate the audit. Keep an eye out for the audit tools as they are released. We plan on developing a goss audit profile for each current remediation role. Going forward, we plan to release a remediation role and goss audit tool profile simultaneously. Role Updates:
3. RHEL 7 STIG/CIS – We have re-written much of the RHEL 7 STIG and CIS roles to increase clarity and readability and address some functionality items. We performed these updates while creating our goss testing framework for each of these roles. We plan on pushing our update to the devel and main branches. We will move the current devel and master branches to a develstable and masterstable branch in the respective repositories. Accordingly, community members who rely on the current version can still use that version going forward; this process will not remove what is currently there. The latest versions of the roles have also been updated to comply with the latest benchmarks.
4. Role Architecture – All roles will change with regard to the structure in the tasks folder. Taking CIS as an example, there will be a folder per section and yaml files for each sub-section. For example control 1.2.1 in CIS will be located in RHEL7-CIS/tasks/section_1/cis_1.2.x.yml. The cis_1.2.x.yml file will contain all controls related to section 1.2.x. This will hopefully make updates to roles a bit easier with less risk. This matches the architecture of our audit tool, creating consistency across remediation and audit platforms. The end goal is to repeat this architecture (the best we can) on STIG roles, but we are starting with CIS.
5. Existing PRs and Issues – With all of these changes comes the task of cleaning up existing PR’s and issues. Our plan is to close all of the existing PR’s and issues because of the re-work. Our team is growing and should be able to stay on top of the new issues and PRs as they come in. Again, I would like to thank the community for your involvement in this project. The input and work from the community has contributed significantly to the success of this project. Please keep an eye out for these changes, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks.