OpenSCAP
Support for OVAL 5.12
Description of Problem:
In 2024-12-04 we got the publication of OVAL 5.12 https://oval-community-guidelines.readthedocs.io/en/5.11.2_release/
Do we want to add support for it or do we wait for OVAL 6.0 and SCAP 3.0 (which will come somewhere next year)?
Neither is yet planned for the foreseeable future (25Q1, 25Q2). No promises either, we are stretched pretty thin ATM.
I found the <merge> element under FunctionGroup in OVAL 5.12 and reading the description that would help to obtain more robust checks on configurations that involve drop in files. Because this contains the option for lexical sort.
See: https://oval-community-guidelines.readthedocs.io/en/5.12.1_release/oval-schema-documentation/oval-definitions-schema.html#mergefunctiontype
So there is at least some reason to support OVAL 5.12
It looks like 5.12+ supports smarter sshd configuration checking, too.
https://oval-community-guidelines.readthedocs.io/en/latest/oval-schema-documentation/unix-system-characteristics-schema.html#sshd-item
The sshd_item stores information retrieved from the local system about sshd parameters and their respective value(s). Information is collected from the target endpoint using the “sshd -f [FILEPATH] -T [NAME]” command and output values are parsed.
