CVE, Common Vulnerabilities, and Exposures is a list of standardized names and codes for naming information security vulnerabilities and exposures to make them publicly known.
Each vulnerability has a unique identification number, which provides a way to publicly share data and information about them.
Thus, a CVE is a standard identifier for information security vulnerabilities. In addition to the unique number, a CVE assigns a brief description to each known vulnerability to facilitate its search, analysis, and management.
CVEs aim to provide a common, unified reference for vulnerabilities so that they can be easily shared and compared across different sources of information, tools, and services. CVEs also help to improve awareness and transparency about threats to information security and foster cooperation and coordination between the different actors involved in their prevention, detection, and response.
Before delving into how the CVE system works, it is worth clarifying what a vulnerability and an exposure are.
Differences between a vulnerability and an exposure
As indicated by INCIBE, a vulnerability is a technical flaw or deficiency in a program that can allow a non-legitimate user to access information or carry out unauthorized operations remotely.
An exposure is an error that allows access or unwanted people to a system or network. Exposures can lead to data breaches, data leaks, and the sale of personally identifiable information (PII) on the dark web.
An example of a data exposure could be accidentally publishing code to a GitHub repository.
How does the CVE system work?
CVE is a security project born in 1999 focused on publicly released software, funded by the US Division of Homeland Security. The CVE Program is managed by the Software Engineering Institute of the MITRE Corporation, a non-profit organization which works in collaboration with the United States government and other partners.
CVEs are issued by the CVE Program, an international initiative that coordinates and maintains a free, public database of vulnerabilities reported by researchers, organizations and companies around the world.
CVEs can be viewed on the official CVE Program website, where you can search by number, keyword, product, supplier, or date. They can also be consulted in other secondary sources that collect and analyze CVEs, such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) in the United States, which provides additional information on the impact, severity and the solutions for each vulnerability.
Criteria followed by CVEs
The CVE Glossary uses the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) to collect information about security vulnerabilities and exposures, catalog them according to various identifiers, and provide them with unique identifiers.
The program is a community-based cooperative project that helps discover new vulnerabilities. These are discovered, assigned and published on the lists so that they are public knowledge. It does not include technical data or information on risks, impacts and remediation.
In this way, the CVE consists of a brief description of the error and the version or component that is affected. It also tells where to find out how to fix the vulnerability or exposure.
CVEs are released once the bug has been fixed. This, by pure logic, is done to avoid exposing affected users to a risk without being able to solve it. In fact, this is one of the criteria that CVEs follow: the vulnerability can be fixed independently of other bugs or vulnerabilities.
Recognition by the software or hardware vendor is also important. Or, the whistleblower must have shared a vulnerability report that demonstrates the negative impact of the bug and that it violates the security policy of the affected system.
CVE identification
As mentioned above, the identification of CVEs is unique. This nomenclature consists of an ID and a date indicating when it was created by MITRE, followed by an individual description field and a reference field. If the vulnerability was not reported directly by MITRE, but was first mapped by an advisory group or bug tracking advisory group, the reference field will include URL links to the advisory group or bug tracker that first reported the vulnerability. Other links that may appear in this field are to product pages affected by CVE.
Kartos by Enthec helps you locate the CVEs of your organization
Kartos Corporate Threat Watchbots is the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform developed by Enthec for the protection of organizations. Working in an automated, continuous and real-time manner, Kartos alerts your organization of any corporate vulnerabilities and exposures so that they can be nullified before any attack is executed through them. Simply enter the company’s domain into the platform, and the Kartos bots will begin crawling the three layers of the web in search of your organization’s CVEs. If you want to learn more about how Kartos can help you locate and override your organization’s CVEs, do not hesitate to contact us.