The purpose of this project is to create *security policy content* for various
platforms -- *Red Hat Enterprise Linux*, *Fedora*, *Ubuntu*, *Debian*, ... --
as well as products -- *Firefox*, *Chromium*, *JRE*, ...
We aim to make it as easy as possible to write new and maintain existing
security content in all the commonly used formats.
## We build security content in various formats
  
*"SCAP content"* refers to documents in the *XCCDF*, *OVAL* and
*Source DataStream* formats. These documents can be presented
in different forms and by different organizations to meet their security
automation and technical implementation needs. For general use, we
recommend *Source DataStreams* because they contain all the data you
need to evaluate and put machines into compliance. The datastreams are
part of our release ZIP archives.
*"Ansible content"* refers to Ansible playbooks generated from security
profiles. These can be used both in check-mode to evaluate compliance,
as well as run-mode to put machines into compliance. We publish these
on *Ansible Galaxy* as well as in release ZIP archives.
*"Bash fix files"* refers to *Bash* scripts generated from security
profiles. These are meant to be run on machines to put them into
compliance. We recommend using other formats but understand that for
some deployment scenarios bash is the only option.
### Why?
We want multiple organizations to be able to efficiently develop security
content. By taking advantage of the powerful build system of this project,
we avoid as much redundancy as possible.
The build system combines the easy-to-edit YAML rule files with OVAL checks,
Ansible task snippets, Bash fixes, and other files. Templating is provided
at every step to avoid boilerplate. Security identifiers
(CCE, NIST ID, STIG, ...) appear in all of our output formats but are all
sourced from the YAML rule files.
We understand that depending on your organization's needs you may need
to use a specific security content format. We let you choose.
---
We use an OpenControl-inspired YAML rule format for input. Write once and
generate security content in XCCDF, Ansible, and others.
```YAML
prodtype: rhel7
title: 'Configure The Number of Allowed Simultaneous Requests'
description: |-
The MaxKeepAliveRequests directive should be set and configured to
or greater by setting the following
in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
MaxKeepAliveRequestsrationale: |- Resource exhaustion can occur when an unlimited number of concurrent requests are allowed on a web site, facilitating a denial of service attack. Mitigating this kind of attack will include limiting the number of concurrent HTTP/HTTPS requests per IP address and may include, where feasible, limiting parameter values associated with keepalive, (i.e., a parameter used to limit the amount of time a connection may be inactive). severity: medium identifiers: cce: "80551-5" ``` --- ### Scan targets Our security content can be used to scan bare-metal machines, virtual machines, virtual machine images (qcow2 and others), containers (including Docker), and container images. We use platform checks to detect whether we should or should not evaluate some of the rules. For example: separate partition checks make perfect sense on bare-metal machines but go against recommended practices on containers. ## Installation ### From packages The preferred method of installation is via the package manager of your distribution. On *Red Hat Enterprise Linux* and *Fedora* you can use: ```bash yum install scap-security-guide ``` On Debian (sid), you can use: ```bash apt install ssg-debian # for Debian guides apt install ssg-debderived # for Debian-based distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) guides apt install ssg-nondebian # for other distributions guides (RHEL, Fedora, etc.) apt install ssg-applications # for application-oriented guides (Firefox, JBoss, etc.) ``` ### From release ZIP files Download pre-built SSG zip archive from [the release page](https://github.com/ComplianceAsCode/content/releases/latest). Each zip file is an archive with ready-made SCAP source datastreams. ### From COPR We maintain a COPR repository that provides unofficial builds of latest versions of openscap, scap-security-guide, scap-workbench, and openscap-daemon. The packages are suitable for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7 and 8 and CentOS 6, 7 and 8. See https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/openscapmaint/openscap-latest/ for detailed instructions. ### From source If ComplianceAsCode is not packaged in your distribution (it may be present there as `scap-security-guide` package), or if the version that is packaged is too old, you need to build the content yourself and install it via `make install`. Please see the [Developer Guide](docs/manual/developer_guide.adoc) document for more info. We also recommend opening an issue on that distributions bug tracker to voice interest. ## Usage We assume you have installed ComplianceAsCode system-wide into a standard location from current upstream sources as instructed in the previous section. There are several ways to consume ComplianceAsCode content, we will only go through a few of them here. ### `oscap` tool The `oscap` tool is a low-level command line interface that comes from the OpenSCAP project. It can be used to scan the local machine. ```bash oscap xccdf eval --profile xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_rht-ccp --results-arf arf.xml --report report.html --oval-results /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel7-ds.xml ``` After evaluation, the `arf.xml` file will contain all results in a reusable *Result DataStream* format, `report.html` will contain a human readable report that can be opened in a browser. Replace the profile with other profile of your choice, you can display all possible choices using: ```bash oscap info /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel7-ds.xml ``` Please see the [OpenSCAP](https://www.open-scap.org/) for more info. ### SCAP Workbench The SCAP Workbench is a graphical user interface for SCAP evaluation and customization. It is suitable for scanning a single machine, either local or remote (via SSH). New versions of SCAP Workbench have SSG integration and will automatically offer it when the application is started. Please see the [SCAP Workbench](https://www.open-scap.org/tools/scap-workbench/) for more info. ### `oscap-ssh` tool `oscap-ssh` comes bundled with OpenSCAP 1.2.3 and later. It allows scanning a remote machine via SSH with an interface resembling the `oscap` tool. The following command evaluates a machine with IP `192.168.1.123` with content stored on the local machine. Keep in mind that `oscap` has to be installed on the remote machine but the SSG content doesn't need to be. ```bash oscap-ssh root@192.168.1.123 22 xccdf eval --profile xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_usgcb-rhel6-server --results-arf arf.xml --report report.html /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel6-ds.xml ``` ### Ansible To see a list of available Ansible Playbooks, run: ```bash # ls /usr/share/scap-security-guide/ansible/ ... rhel6-playbook-standard.yml rhel6-playbook-stig-rhel6-server-upstream.yml rhel6-playbook-usgcb-rhel6-server.yml rhel7-playbook-C2S.yml rhel7-playbook-cjis-rhel7-server.yml rhel7-playbook-common.yml rhel7-playbook-docker-host.yml rhel7-playbook-cui.yml ... ``` These Ansible Playbooks are generated from *SCAP* profiles available for the products. To apply the playbook on your local machine run: (*THIS WILL CHANGE CONFIGURATION OF THE MACHINE!*) ```bash ansible-playbook -i "localhost," -c local /usr/share/scap-security-guide/ansible/rhel7-playbook-rht-ccp.yml ``` Each of the Ansible Playbooks contains instructions on how to deploy them. Here is a snippet of the instructions: ```YAML ... # This file was generated by OpenSCAP 1.2.16 using: # $ oscap xccdf generate fix --profile rht-ccp --template urn:xccdf:fix:script:ansible sds.xml # # This script is generated from an OpenSCAP profile without preliminary evaluation. # It attempts to fix every selected rule, even if the system is already compliant. # # How to apply this remediation role: # $ ansible-playbook -i "192.168.1.155," playbook.yml # $ ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml ... ``` ### Bash To see a list of available Bash scripts, run: ```bash # ls /usr/share/scap-security-guide/bash/ ... rhel7-script-hipaa.sh rhel7-script-ospp.sh rhel7-script-pci-dss.sh ... ``` These Bash scripts are generated from *SCAP* profiles available for the products. Similar to Ansible Playbooks, each of the Bash scripts contain instructions on how to deploy them. ## Support The SSG mailing list can be found at [https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/scap-security-guide](https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/scap-security-guide). If you encounter issues with OpenSCAP or SCAP Workbench, use [https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/open-scap-list](https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/open-scap-list) You can also join the `#openscap` IRC channel on `chat.freenode.net`. ## A little bit of history This project started in 2011 as a collaboration between government agencies and commercial operating system vendors. The original name was SCAP Security Guide. The original scope was to create SCAP datastreams. Over time, it grew into the biggest open-source beyond-SCAP content project. The next few years saw the introduction of not just government-specific security profiles but also commercial, such as PCI-DSS. Later, the industry starts moving towards different security content formats, such as Ansible, Puppet, and Chef InSpec. The community reacted by evolving the tooling and helped transform SSG into a more general-purpose security content project. This change happened over time in 2017 and 2018. In September 2018, we decided to change the name of the project to avoid confusion. We envision that the future will be format-agnostic. That's why opted for an abstraction instead of using XCCDF for the input format. ## Further reading The SSG homepage is [https://www.open-scap.org/security-policies/scap-security-guide/](https://www.open-scap.org/security-policies/scap-security-guide/). * [SSG User Manual](docs/manual/user_guide.adoc) * [SSG Developer Guide](docs/manual/developer_guide.adoc) * [Compliance As Code Blog](https://complianceascode.github.io/) ## Contributors β¨ Thanks goes to these wonderful people ([emoji key](https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/emoji-key)):
