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.
The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities.
Attack Complexity
This metric describes the conditions beyond the attacker’s control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability.
successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected.
Privileges Required
This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess before successfully exploiting the vulnerability.
The attacker requires privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
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.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited. For example, a successful exploit may only be possible during the installation of an application by a system administrator.
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.
An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
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.
There is a total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact. For example, an attacker steals the administrator's password, or private encryption keys of a web server.
Integrity Impact
This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information.
There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability Impact
This metric measures the impact to the availability of the impacted component resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability.
There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.
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.