Add NIST SP 800-171 r3 (CUI) profiles for RHEL 8, 9, and 10 - #15062
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Add NIST SP 800-171 r3 (CUI) profiles for RHEL 8, 9, and 10#15062ggbecker wants to merge 8 commits into
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August 26, 2026 14:14
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According to docs/manual/developer/04_style_guide.md, new Python methods and scripts should have type hints.
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I believe this scrip will be a one time thing to this repository and I will remove it from this pull request before we merge it. Sorry for the noise
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Are FMF metadata in Contest updated so that Contest tests will test the new profile?
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Yes, this needs to land in sync with: RHSecurityCompliance/contest#664
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A control's 'controls:' list can reference controls from another policy (e.g. 'nist_800_53:ac-2'). Such references resolve against the current product's policies at build time. Derived frameworks like NIST 800-171 reference NIST 800-53 controls that only exist for some products (rhel8/9/10), so building any other product would previously fail with 'policy doesn't exist'. Cross-policy references now degrade gracefully: if the target policy or control isn't loaded for the product being built, the reference contributes no rules instead of aborting the build. Same-policy references are still resolved strictly so typos remain hard errors.
Add a single, product-agnostic controls/nist_800_171.yml in which each 800-171 requirement references (via cross-policy 'controls:' entries) the NIST 800-53 controls it was tailored from. At build time these resolve against the current product's nist_800_53 policy, so each requirement inherits the union of rules mapped to its source controls for that product; products without nist_800_53 resolve to no rules. Register the nist-800-171 reference type so rules selected under a requirement automatically receive that requirement id as a reference, mirroring the STIG stigid auto-reference behavior. The control file is derived from the official NIST SP 800-171 r3 publication.
Redefine the cui profile on each RHEL product to select all rules from the generic nist_800_171 control file (nist_800_171:all). Each 800-171 requirement resolves against the product's own nist_800_53 policy, so the profile pulls in the union of rules mapped to the source 800-53 controls for that product. RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 previously defined cui by inheriting ospp with a couple of variable overrides; that inheritance is dropped in favor of the control-file-driven selection. RHEL 10 gains a cui profile for the first time.
Consolidate the two NIST 800-171 reference types into one. The repo already had a 'cui' reference (Controlled Unclassified Information) pointing at NIST 800-171 Revision 2. Rather than maintain a separate 'nist-800-171' reference type for Revision 3, repurpose 'cui' as the single, current NIST 800-171 reference: - Point the cui reference URL at the r3 publication and remove the separate nist-800-171 reference type from constants. - Set reference_type: cui on the generic nist_800_171 control file (and the generator), so rules selected under a requirement receive that requirement id as a 'cui' reference automatically. The cui profile now maps to the cui reference end to end: cui profile -> nist_800_171 control file -> product nist_800_53 -> rules, with each rule stamped with its r3 requirement id.
Remove the 304 superseded manual r2 'cui:' references from rule files now that r2 is superseded by r3 (see previous commit repurposing the cui reference type). Drop now-empty references blocks left behind by the removal.
These rules are selected by the CIS profile but were missing from the CUI (NIST 800-171 r3) profile, because they were listed under NIST 800-53 controls that 800-171 does not reference, even though each rule's own nist reference points to a control that 800-171 does reference: - selinux_state -> ac-3 (Access Enforcement), alongside its already-mapped companions selinux_not_disabled and selinux_policytype - package_firewalld_installed -> sc-7 (Boundary Protection), alongside service_firewalld_enabled - package_xorg-x11-server-common_removed, xwindows_runlevel_target -> cm-7 (Least Functionality) on RHEL 9, alongside the other package removals This closes the CUI-vs-CIS parity gaps that were genuine 800-53 mapping inconsistencies; the remaining CIS-only rules map to controls outside the 800-171 subset and are correctly excluded.
products/rhel9/profiles/cis.profile (and cis_server_l1/cis_workstation_l1/l2) explicitly unselect file_owner_at_allow, file_ownership_home_directories, and group_unique_name via '!rule_id', with the comment: 'Following rules once had a prodtype incompatible with the rhel9 product'. That exclusion lives at the profile level, not in cis_rhel9.yml's control structure, so these 3 rules were still listed under RHEL9's nist_800_53 ac-3/cm-1/cm-6 controls and got pulled into the cui profile via nist_800_171:all, making cui select 3 rules CIS RHEL9 does not. RHEL8 and RHEL10's CIS profiles have no such exclusion and legitimately select all three rules, so this change is scoped to RHEL9 only, matching RHEL9 CIS's actual current selections whether or not the underlying prodtype-era exclusion is itself still warranted (a separate, existing CIS RHEL9 profile question, out of scope here). Also add a PRODUCT_RULE_EXCEPTIONS mechanism to utils/nist_sync/sync_nist_split.py so a future re-sync of the RHEL9 NIST 800-53 mapping does not silently reintroduce these 3 rules, since load_all_cis_items_from_control_files() reads cis_rhel9.yml's control structure (which still lists them) rather than the profile's '!rule_id' exclusions.
Rebasing onto upstream master picked up f6c42ec ('Add ensure_journald_and_rsyslog_not_active_together to NIST 800-53 AU-2 (rhel9)'), an independent, correctly-scoped mapping fix (au-2 is referenced by 800-171 requirement 03.03.01) that legitimately adds this rule to the cui profile. Update the stability reference to match.
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Description
This PR adds NIST SP 800-171 Revision 3 (Controlled Unclassified Information, CUI) profiles for RHEL 8, 9, and 10, built on top of the existing NIST 800-53 control mappings.
What's included
controls/resolution now tolerates foreign control references that don't resolve for a given product, so a product-agnostic control file can reference another policy's controls without hard-failing.controls/nist_800_171.yml— derived from NIST 800-53. Each 800-171 requirement references the correspondingnist_800_53control(s), which resolve at build time against the product's 800-53 policy. Generated viautils/nist_sync/generate_nist_800_171.py.cuireference type consolidation — thecuireference now points at the r3 document (https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/800-171r3/NIST.SP.800-171r3.html). Rules selected by the control file are auto-stamped with the requirement id as acuireference. Legacy r2cuireferences were dropped from rule files to avoid conflicting/duplicate references.Testing