National Vulnerability Database
The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is a comprehensive cybersecurity resource maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It serves as the U.S. government's repository of standards-based vulnerability management data and provides detailed information about publicly known security vulnerabilities and their potential impact.
Here's a detailed breakdown of the NVD:
Core Function:
Centralized Repository: The NVD aggregates and analyzes publicly disclosed Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs).
Enrichment of CVE Data: While CVE provides a standardized naming system for vulnerabilities, the NVD adds crucial contextual information.
Standardization: It represents vulnerability data using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), which facilitates the automation of vulnerability management, security measurement, and compliance activities.
Key Information Provided by the NVD:
CVE Identifiers: Each vulnerability in the NVD is linked to a unique CVE identifier.
Vulnerability Descriptions: The NVD provides detailed descriptions of the security flaws.
Severity Scoring: Using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), the NVD assigns each vulnerability a severity score (ranging from 0 to 10), indicating its potential impact. These scores consider factors like exploitability and the harm that could result.
Affected Products: The NVD identifies the specific software, hardware, and versions affected by each vulnerability using the Common Platform Enumeration (CPE).
Impact Metrics: It includes metrics detailing the potential consequences of a successful exploit, such as confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Remediation Guidance: In many cases, the NVD offers guidance on how to fix or mitigate the identified vulnerabilities, such as suggesting patches or configuration changes.
References: NVD entries often include links to security advisories and other relevant information from vendors and security researchers.
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE): The NVD often associates vulnerabilities with specific CWEs, categorizing the type of weakness.
Importance in Cybersecurity:
Vulnerability Management: The NVD is an organization's foundational resource for identifying, tracking, and managing its systems and software vulnerabilities.
Risk Assessment: By providing severity scores and impact metrics, the NVD helps organizations prioritize which vulnerabilities pose the most significant risk and need to be addressed urgently.
Patch Management: Security teams use NVD data to determine which patches and updates are critical for mitigating known security flaws.
Security Automation: The standardized data format (SCAP) allows security tools and platforms to consume and act upon vulnerability information from the NVD automatically.
Compliance: Many security standards and regulations require organizations to monitor and address known vulnerabilities, making the NVD an essential resource for compliance efforts.
Incident Response: During security incidents, the NVD can be consulted to understand the nature and potential impact quickly.
Security Research: Researchers use the NVD to analyze vulnerability trends and develop new security tools and techniques.
Relationship with CVE:
The NVD builds upon the foundation of the CVE list. When a new vulnerability is disclosed and assigned a CVE ID, the NVD analysts then analyze this information, adding details like severity scores, affected products, and remediation advice. CVE is the initial catalog, and the NVD provides enriched and more actionable intelligence.
Limitations:
Publicly Known Vulnerabilities: The NVD tracks publicly disclosed vulnerabilities assigned to CVE IDs. It may not include information on zero-day exploits or vulnerabilities that are not yet public.
Processing Delays: While the NVD strives for timely updates, there can be delays between a CVE's disclosure, analysis, and inclusion in the NVD. Recently, the NVD has faced a backlog in processing new vulnerabilities.
Generic Scoring: The severity scores provided by the NVD are generic and might not perfectly reflect the risk in every specific environment. Organizations need to consider their context when prioritizing vulnerabilities.
The National Vulnerability Database is a critical resource for cybersecurity professionals and organizations worldwide. It provides a wealth of standardized information about known vulnerabilities, enabling proactive security measures and contributing significantly to the overall security posture of IT systems.
ThreatNG relies on continuously syncing up and referencing vulnerability data from sources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) to enrich its modules and provide comprehensive security insights. This data is essential across ThreatNG's functionalities:
ThreatNG's external discovery capabilities identify an organization's attack surface, including subdomains, IPs, and technologies.
The vulnerability data, especially from DarCache Vulnerability (which includes DarCache NVD, EPSS, KEV, and eXploit), is cross-referenced with the discovered technologies to pinpoint potential weaknesses.
For example, suppose the discovery module identifies a web server running a specific version of Apache. In that case, ThreatNG can immediately reference the NVD to check for known vulnerabilities associated with that version.
ThreatNG's external assessment ratings directly use vulnerability data to calculate various risk scores:
Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment considers "vulnerabilities" discovered in the attack surface. NVD data provides the specific vulnerability information and its severity, allowing ThreatNG to accurately gauge the risk associated with those vulnerabilities. For instance, if exposed sensitive ports are discovered, ThreatNG checks if any known exploits (from DarCache eXploit) exist for vulnerabilities related to those services.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is derived from "known vulnerabilities," among other factors. ThreatNG uses NVD data to assess the presence of vulnerabilities that could be exploited for initial access or privilege escalation, increasing the susceptibility to breaches and ransomware attacks.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG discovers and analyzes mobile apps for security issues. Vulnerability data can help ThreatNG identify known vulnerabilities within these mobile apps' libraries or frameworks.
By integrating vulnerability data, ThreatNG moves beyond simply identifying assets to providing a risk-based assessment of those assets.
3. Reporting:
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities (Executive, Technical, Prioritized, etc.) use vulnerability data to provide context and prioritization.
Reports include risk levels, reasoning, and recommendations. Vulnerability data from NVD enriches these reports by:
Providing accurate severity ratings (CVSS scores) to help prioritize vulnerabilities.
Offering detailed descriptions of vulnerabilities to aid in understanding the risk.
Linking to reference information for remediation guidance.
For example, a report might highlight a critical vulnerability in a web application (identified using NVD data), explain the potential impact (e.g., remote code execution), and recommend specific patching steps.
ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface.
As new vulnerability data becomes available (e.g., new entries in the NVD), ThreatNG automatically re-evaluates the risk posture of monitored assets.
This ensures that organizations are promptly alerted to newly discovered vulnerabilities that may affect them.
ThreatNG's investigation modules, such as Domain Intelligence and IP Intelligence, use vulnerability data to provide in-depth analysis.
For example, the Subdomain Intelligence module identifies exposed ports. ThreatNG can then use DarCache Vulnerability to provide details on known vulnerabilities associated with those ports, helping security analysts understand the potential risk and prioritize their investigation.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache):
DarCache Vulnerability is a core component of ThreatNG, housing vulnerability-related intelligence.
It includes:
DarCache NVD: Direct integration with the NVD to pull in vulnerability data.
DarCache EPSS: Integration with Exploit Prediction Scoring System to prioritize vulnerabilities most likely to be exploited.
DarCache KEV: Integration with the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog to highlight vulnerabilities actively used in attacks.
DarCache eXploit: A repository of verified proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits, enabling ThreatNG to assess the exploitability of vulnerabilities.
These repositories centralize vulnerability intelligence within ThreatNG, making it readily accessible to all modules.
7. Working with Complementary Solutions:
The document does not explicitly detail ThreatNG's integrations with specific complementary solutions in the context of vulnerability data.
However, the capability to export data via APIs is mentioned, which would allow ThreatNG to share vulnerability findings with SIEMs, vulnerability management platforms, and other security tools.
For instance, ThreatNG could integrate with a SIEM to provide vulnerability context to security events, enabling better correlation and prioritization of alerts.
