[CentOS] PCI/DSS compliance on CentOS

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 22:52:13 +0530
Arun Khan <knura9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a client project to implement PCI/DSS compliance.

Some advice from my practical professional knowledge...

> The PCI/DSS auditor has stipulated that the web server, application
> middleware (tomcat), the db server have to be on different systems.
> In addition the auditor has also stipulated that there be a NTP
> server, a "patch" server,

There is always the scope to be understood.

If a server has card numbers somewhere, that server in on scope.
So is any other server on the same network segment.
So is any firewall delimiting these network segments.

Now... if you have a sufficiently large number of systems in scope,
it's more practical to suppose PCI:DSS is in scope on all servers.

This eases your maintenance as you won't have exceptions to deal with,
or justify, but if you have very few systems in scope rather than most
of the others which aren't, it'll be your decision considering the work
overload. I personally still advise to follow most rules on the non
scoped servers as they are in fact wise rules.

> The Host OS on all of the above nodes will be CentOS 6.2.

Not a good practice to say "6.2". Merely applying patches as time goes
on means in some time you'll be running 6.3. Say 6. :)

> Below is a list of things that would be necessary.
> 
> 1. Digital Certificates for each host on the PCI/DSS segment
> 2. SELinux on each Linux host in the PCI/DSS network segment

Beware that many instructions tell you to disable selinux. I found that
with a little bit of work and the help of audit2why and a few more
selinux commands, you can usually work around bad apps by assuming the
risk of allowing what they need.

A master will write his own selinux rules according to apps, though.

> 3. Tripwire/AIDE on each Linux host in the PCI/DSS segment

I advise OSSEC, rather than those, as it's a much better Host IDS.

> 4. OS hardening scripts (e.g. Bastille Linux)

I'm very wary of these generic ones, I usually bet on strongly reducing
the packages installed and defining the security settings straight from
my kickstart install scripts.

> 5. Firewall
> 6. IDS (Snort)
> 6. Central “syslog” server

Be careful to send logs under TLS. I found that as a syslog server,
rsyslog on RHEL/CentOS 5 *sucks* and gets you in trouble with ram
exhaustion and crashes. I had to backport from 6 as the idiotic siem
software running on that server demanded series 5 (even though it's
just java *sigh*) and we ran into this issue with rsyslog, which is
quite old under RHEL/CentOS.

This siem server does not support TLS syslog, only plain UDP/TCP
unecrypted syslog, so one has to use a syslog server to receive under
TLS then forward to the localhost.

> However, beyond this I would appreciate any comments/feedback /
> suggestion if you or your organization has undergone a PCI/DSS audit
> and what are the gotchas that you encountered, especially with respect
> to CentOS/ open source stack.

Use sudo extensively. If you have many servers without central password
validation and too little people, it's better to have passwordless sudo
restricted to admins group as identified by access via OpenSSH RSA keys
than having to change your password every month on hundreds of servers.

Restrict your access to root shell, and keep it's password (written by
two persons, each knowing their own half) in a safe where none of you
can access without paper trail.

Yes, as an admin you can override that, but if you have externalized
logs audited by a separate set of people, your trails may get you in
trouble, so that risk is mitigated.

> I came across this which kind of brings out issues between the
> implementer and the PCI/DSS auditor.
> <http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/15098/pci-dss-compliance-for-a-vps-using-centos>

I see there some things that are not true, namely WRT CentOS versions.

It has a lot to do with *how* you do your things, what evidences you
register, whether the auditor is excessively strict and/or knows the
technology and/or does a risk based assessment, how segmented is your
network, and so on.

Rui