[RFE] [RFC] Define way / policy for the expected form of XCCDF rules' names (possible to use interrogative form instead of current's imperative one?)

Jan Lieskovsky jlieskov at redhat.com
Wed Dec 4 16:02:30 UTC 2013


Hello folks,

  as can be seen for example in the scap-workbench demo pictures:
  [1] https://fedorahosted.org/scap-workbench/attachment/wiki/WikiStart/browsing_results.png
  [2] https://fedorahosted.org/scap-workbench/attachment/wiki/WikiStart/intro_screenshot.png

the current way how XCCDF rules' names are created is in imperative
form (e.g. "Set / Ensure / Verify ...") instead of the interrogative
one (e.g. "Substantive [Subject of the check] meets feature / criteria").

While this approach is natural for HTML version of the guide, the XCCDF
rule names are used also in tools performing the scan / remediation
(e.g. scap-workbench:
  [3] https://fedorahosted.org/scap-workbench/)

And this is where the source of confusion appears / might appear -- 
consider the following selected cases (there are far more of them
than just these though):

          Rule Name                         |  Scan Result
----------------------------------------------------------
 Set Password Minimum Length in login.defs  |  fail
----------------------------------------------------------
 Set Password Minimum Age                   |  fail
----------------------------------------------------------
 Set Password Maximum Age                   |  fail

What the scan is actually doing being comparing if applied system's
policy for the expected form of passwords:
* doesn't allow passwords shorter than expected minimum length,
* if there are minimum / maximum periods how long password
  (at least / at max) should be considered as valid defined.

But based on the above presented form scap-workbench /
scap-security-guide user, unfamiliar with the internals,
might obtain an opinion / impressions when seeing the 'fail'
result, that the tool actually tried:
* to set the minimum length for passwords on the system,
* to set minimum and maximum period during that passwords
  should be considered valid,

and this act failed (IOW the current form migth induce a perception
that instead of OVAL check failure [the true reason], the
remediation failed [red herring / false positive]).
 
To avoid this source of confusion we propose to change the way
how XCCDF rules are named (use interrogative form instead of
imperative one).

To mention examples for above three cases:
* 'Set Password Minimum Length in login.defs' would become for
  example:
  'User Passwords In login.defs Meet The Minimum Length Requirement /
   User Passwords Meet The Minimum Length Requirement / 
   Only Passwords Longer Than Defined Minimum Allowed'

* 'Set Password Minimum Age' could become:
  'Minimum Period Between Password Changes Defined'

* 'Set Password Maximum Age' could be:
  'Maximum Number of Days a Password Might Be Used Set'

Using this form (we think) the failing scan result wouldn't
conduct to impressions, the remediation being what failed.

If we could agree on this proposal, I could come with patch
how Fedora rules (or even RHEL6?) names should be changed
not to (possibly) lead to this confusion.

Comments / feedback appreciated.

Thank you && Regards, Jan.
--
Jan iankko Lieskovsky / Red Hat Security Technologies Team

P.S.: Prior actually requesting / proposing this change we
      have been considering if scap-workbench tool couldn't
      instead of XCCDF rule names display underlying OVAL
      check titles (and have these titles customized). But
      this approach has been realized as not possible to perform
      because:
      * there might be more than just one OVAL checks for one
        XCCDF rule (in that case which one to display?),
      * during parsing the particular XCCDF scap-workbench
        (some other tools too?) is operating on rule IDs instead
        of rule names so it would be difficult (if even
        possible) to modify the code to get it to display
        OVAL titles instead of XCCDF rule names.

P.S.#2: Another possibility which comes to my mind is instead
        to have XCCDF rules shared in both, the HTML version of the
        guide and in the validation tool screen, we could dedicate
        XCCDF rule names to be displayed just in the validation tools,
        and generate rule names for HTML version of the guide some
        other way (like keeping it in some other / yet different 
        XCCDF element and when generating HTML guide use content of
        that element instead of XCCDF rule name).


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