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Gov't.-published List of Computer Security Holes

Posted by timothy on from the benefitting-the-commonwealth dept.

Arngautr writes "ScienceDaily.com reports that The U.S. government has created a 'comprehensive database of computer vulnerabilities,' The National Vulnerability Database. Updated daily, it currently includes almost 12,000 vulnerabilities. Should be a boon to IT professionals and script kiddies alike."

6 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. This might actually be useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The first thing that caught me eye on there was "Tar 1.15.1 does not properly warn the user when extracting setuid or setgid files, which may allow local users or remote attackers to gain privileges."

    And guess which version of Tar is GNU's latest.

    Anyway, I can't believe I'm saying this, but thanks US Gov!

    1. Re:This might actually be useful by MobyDisk · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Granted, it would be a nice feature, but why would you run tar as root to install something into a globally readable folder without full knowing what it is extracting? And why is it tar's job to tell you that this is a bad idea?
      which may allow local users or remote attackers to gain privileges."
      A better way to say that is that you are giving local users or remote attackers priveledges. This is very different from a buffer overflow.
  2. Unknown bug by TheCreeep · · Score: 4, Funny
    CAN-2005-1767 Summary: Unknown vulnerability in the Linux kernel 2.6.x and 2.4.x allows local users to cause a denial of service (stack fault exception) via unknown attack vectors. Published: 8/5/2005 Severity: Medium

    "I don't know where, I don't know how, but there's a bug in your kernel!"
  3. Re:Next step... by Ingolfke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My guess is that they missed some bugs :/

    The list is no doubt not absolutely complete... but you could easily attribute the difference in the # of vulnerabilities between Windows and Linux to the the fact that Linux is Open Source, and therefore more people are participating in the debugging process. Or it could be that Windows really does have fewer vulnerabilities than Windows. Of course that doesn't mean that the vulnerabilities that it does have are less impactful than those on Linux.

  4. Re:Next step... by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 2, Informative

    It depends on the search criteria. The initial page doesn't tell you what it's doing. If you use the "Advanced Search" plage, and select for the Vendor, you get:
    Linux = 942
    Microsoft = 1097

    I'm not sure who the Linux vendor is. :)

    Then, if you search by remotely executable and high vulnerability, you get:
    Linux = 232
    Microsoft = 376

    If you add "allows admin access" you get:
    Linux = 110
    Microsoft = 62

    So, expect to see all sorts of statistics to prove one way or the other that both Windows and Linux are the more secure system. Should be fun.

    One thing that might be interesting is to compare similar products to see who has the most and the worst vulnerabilities (especially if you are about to buy something).

    --
    The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
  5. Re:Next step... by NemoX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But, this compares a platform (consisting of many companies with many producst) to one company (with many products).

    Try the advanced search and compare O/S to O/S...which yields:

    Windows XP: 139
    SuSE Linux 9.3: 8