Vulnerability Discussion

It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors.

Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions).

The gssproxy package is a proxy for GSS API credential handling and could expose secrets on some networks. It is not needed for normal function of the OS.

Check

Verify the gssproxy package has not been installed on the system with the following commands:

$ sudo yum list installed gssproxy

gssproxy.x86_64 0.8.0-14.el8 @anaconda

If the gssproxy package is installed and is not documented with the information system security officer (ISSO) as an operational requirement, this is a finding.

If NFS mounts are being used, this is not a finding.

Fix

Document the gssproxy package with the ISSO as an operational requirement or remove it from the system with the following command:

$ sudo yum remove gssproxy