this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Here's my question, if anyone reading this post knows the answer: the simple version is... is it safe to enable the rhel-7-server-rhceph-4-tools-rpms repository?
To give a little more detail: old versions of modules that come from the Ceph package got flagged by our security scan. It appears that Ceph is installed by default on RHEL 7, but the repository above which I believe will update these modules, is not enabled by default. This seems odd to me, and the documentation for Ceph mentions that the EPEL repository should be disabled. It doesn't appear that this repository is enabled, but this still made me concerned about why the Ceph repository isn't enabled by default, hence my question.
Edit: I will try to contact Red Hat support to confirm the best course of action, like some have suggested on this thread. Thank you everyone for your help.
Edit 2: I figured out a course of action to take. The vulnerabilities were flagged for the librados2 and librbd1 packages. I used the command "rpm -q --whatrequires " to navigate the dependencies of these two packages to end at libvirt. Using the same command with libvirt, I was able to determine that no other package is dependent on it. Thus, it appears to me that I can address the issue by uninstalling all 3 packages. This seems safer and more secure than addressing the issue by enabling a new repository on the server. To be safe, I will take a snapshot of the VM before making the changes. I'll post another update afterward.
RHEL uses a practice called backporting, where older versions of software in packages get fixes from newer versions of the software without changing the version. This means that scanners that only check the version number can give you false positives for CVEs that are actually fixed. Is there a specific CVE that your scanner mentions? If so, you can look it up in the Red Hat CVE database and check if the fix has been backported, and which release of the package includes said fix.
Oh, I was not aware of this. This is very useful! I will check it out and post an update later. Thank you!
I checked, and the versions of those modules that are currently installed are way behind what's provided in the listed Red Hat patch, so it does seem that the updates for this just haven't been installed. I will try to double-check with Red Hat support to be sure that enabling the Ceph repository is the correct course of action to take. Thank you once again for your help.
You might want to check the errata for the packages your scanning tools complained about. Rhel will keep stable versions at the same release version, but backport security fixes in.
Many security scanners are stupid about this.
Since it is rhel, you have a support contract, right? What do they say?
Thanks. I had verified that there is an errata before posting here. I presume that it hasn't been installed due to that repository being disabled, but maybe I'm mistaken?
Indeed. In the process of researching this I found a related KB article from Red Hat that basically said that the security scanner is not supposed to flag this.
I'm positive we have a support contract, but I've never had to use it, so I'm not familiar with the process. I'm not one of the main linux admins here. If I can't find the answer either here or from my own research, I'll look into the process to open a case.
Thanks again.
Final update on this issue. I found out about the "rpm -q --whatrequires " command and used that to navigate the dependency chain for the modules in question. I was able to determine that those modules were ultimately not being used for anything. Once I confirmed that, I removed the modules. So far so good. It didn't cause any issues to the services on that server. I will find out if it resolved the vulnerability that had been flagged by the security scanner next time it runs, probably at the end of the month.