Common Vulnerability Scoring System
- Purpose: CVSS is an open framework for communicating the severity of software vulnerabilities. It provides a standardized way to assess and rank vulnerabilities based on their potential impact.
- How it works: CVSS assigns a numerical score to each vulnerability, ranging from 0 to 10, where higher scores indicate more severe vulnerabilities.
- Key Metrics: CVSS considers several factors to determine the score, including:
- Exploitability: How easy it is to exploit the vulnerability.
- Impact: The potential consequences of a successful exploit (e.g., data loss, system disruption).
- Scope: The extent of the impact (e.g., affecting a single system or the entire network).
- Benefits:
- Prioritization: Helps organizations prioritize which vulnerabilities to address first based on their severity.
- Communication: Provides a common language for communicating about vulnerabilities with other organizations, researchers, and the public.
- Risk Management: Enables better risk assessment and management decisions.
In simpler terms: Imagine CVSS as a standardized scale for measuring the “danger” of a software flaw. It helps organizations understand which vulnerabilities pose the greatest threat and focus their resources on addressing the most critical issues first.
Note: CVSS is an evolving standard with several versions (e.g., CVSS v2, CVSS v3, CVSS v4). Each version has its own set of metrics and scoring calculations.