Base: Exploitabilty Metrics

The Exploitability metrics reflect the characteristics of the thing that is vulnerable, which we refer to formally as the vulnerable component.

Attack Vector

This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible.

Attack Complexity

This metric describes the conditions beyond the attacker’s control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability.

Privileges Required

This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess before successfully exploiting the vulnerability.

User Interaction

This metric captures the requirement for a human user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable component.

Base: Scope Metrics

The Scope metric captures whether a vulnerability in one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.

Scope

Formally, a security authority is a mechanism (e.g., an application, an operating system, firmware, a sandbox environment) that defines and enforces access control in terms of how certain subjects/actors (e.g., human users, processes) can access certain restricted objects/resources (e.g., files, CPU, memory) in a controlled manner. All the subjects and objects under the jurisdiction of a single security authority are considered to be under one security scope. If a vulnerability in a vulnerable component can affect a component which is in a different security scope than the vulnerable component, a Scope change occurs. Intuitively, whenever the impact of a vulnerability breaches a security/trust boundary and impacts components outside the security scope in which vulnerable component resides, a Scope change occurs.

Base: Impact Metrics

The Impact metrics capture the effects of a successfully exploited vulnerability on the component that suffers the worst outcome that is most directly and predictably associated with the attack. Analysts should constrain impacts to a reasonable, final outcome which they are confident an attacker is able to achieve.

Confidentiality Impact

This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information resources managed by a software component due to a successfully exploited vulnerability.

Integrity Impact

This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information.

Availability Impact

This metric measures the impact to the availability of the impacted component resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability.

Temporal Metrics

The Temporal metrics measure the current state of exploit techniques or code availability, the existence of any patches or workarounds, or the confidence in the description of a vulnerability.

Environmental Metrics

These metrics enable the analyst to customize the CVSS score depending on the importance of the affected IT asset to a user’s organization, measured in terms of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Base: Exploitabilty Metrics

The Exploitability metrics reflect the characteristics of the thing that is vulnerable, which we refer to formally as the vulnerable component.

Attack Vector

This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible.

Attack Complexity

This metric describes the conditions beyond the attacker's control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability.

Privileges Required

This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess before successfully exploiting the vulnerability.

User Interaction

This metric captures the requirement for a user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable component.

Base: Scope Metrics

An important property captured by CVSS v3.0 is the ability for a vulnerability in one software component to impact resources beyond its means, or privileges.

Scope

Formally, Scope refers to the collection of privileges defined by a computing authority (e.g. an application, an operating system, or a sandbox environment) when granting access to computing resources (e.g. files, CPU, memory, etc). These privileges are assigned based on some method of identification and authorization. In some cases, the authorization may be simple or loosely controlled based upon predefined rules or standards. For example, in the case of Ethernet traffic sent to a network switch, the switch accepts traffic that arrives on its ports and is an authority that controls the traffic flow to other switch ports.

Base: Impact Metrics

The Impact metrics refer to the properties of the impacted component.

Confidentiality Impact

This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information resources managed by a software component due to a successfully exploited vulnerability.

Integrity Impact

This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information.

Availability Impact

This metric measures the impact to the availability of the impacted component resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability.

Temporal Metrics

The Temporal metrics measure the current state of exploit techniques or code availability, the existence of any patches or workarounds, or the confidence that one has in the description of a vulnerability.

Environmental Metrics