Tag Archives: OVAL

Linux Patch Wednesday: here is this May peak!

Linux Patch Wednesday: here is this May peak!

Linux Patch Wednesday: here is this May peak! 🤦‍♂️ Also about June Linux Patch Wednesday. If you remember, in my post about the May Linux Patch Wednesday I was happy that, despite the launch of the rule for Unknown dates, the peak in May was insignificant. Although “32406 oval definitions without a date received a nominal date of 2024-05-15”. It turned out that the peak was not visible due to an error in the code. Ba-dum-tss! 🥸🤷‍♂️

I noticed that not all CVEs are in LPW bulletins, despite the addition of nominal dates, for example the high-profile vulnerability Elevation of Privilege (Local Privilege Escalation) – Linux Kernel (CVE-2024-1086). I could not find it anywhere. I debugged the function that distributes vulnerabilities into bulletins and added tests. I have ensured that all 38362 CVEs from the Linux OVAL content are actually distributed in bulletins. Including CVE-2024-1086. Here it is in February:

$ grep "CVE-2024-1086"  bulletins/*
bulletins/2024-02-21.json: "CVE-2024-1086": [
bulletins/2024-02-21.json: "title": "CVE-2024-1086 linux",
bulletins/2024-02-21.json: "title": "CVE-2024-1086 linux",
bulletins/2024-02-21.json: "title": "CVE-2024-1086 linux",

Well, there really is a peak in May. And how huge it is! 11476 CVEs! 😱 This is so much that I regenerated the Vulristics report for it only using 2 sources: Vulners and BDU. Since even from Vulners the data was not collected quickly enough. The report contains 77 vulnerabilities with signs of active exploitation in the wild and 1404 vulnerabilities with exploits, but without signs of active exploitation in the wild. Since for the most part these are old vulnerabilities for which it was simply not clear exactly when they were fixed, for example, Remote Code Execution – Apache HTTP Server (CVE-2021-42013), I will not analyze them in detail – for those interested, see the report. But please note that the report size is very large.

🗒 Vulristics report on the May Linux Patch Wednesday (31.3 MB)

As for the June Linux Patch Wednesday, which was finalized on June 19, there are 1040 vulnerabilities. Also quite a lot. Why is this so? On the one hand, the rule for Unknown dates added 977 Debian OVAL definitions without a date. Not 30k, like in May, but also significant. Out of 1040 vulnerabilities, 854 are Linux Kernel vulnerabilities. Moreover, there are quite a lot of “old” vulnerability identifiers, but created in 2024. For example, CVE-2021-47489 with NVD Published Date 05/22/2024. 🤔 CNA Linux Kernel is doing something strange.

🔻 With signs of exploitation in the wild again Remote Code Execution – Chromium (CVE-2024-5274, CVE-2024-4947), like in Microsoft Patch Tuesday. According to the BDU, Remote Code Execution – Libarchive (CVE-2024-26256) is also exploited in the wild.

🔸 Another 20 vulnerabilities with a public exploit. I can highlight separately Remote Code Execution – Cacti (CVE-2024-25641) and Remote Code Execution – onnx/onnx framework (CVE-2024-5187).

🗒 Vulristics report on the June Linux Patch Wednesday (4.4 MB)

November 2023 – January 2024: New Vulristics Features, 3 Months of Microsoft Patch Tuesdays and Linux Patch Wednesdays, Year 2023 in Review

November 2023 – January 2024: New Vulristics Features, 3 Months of Microsoft Patch Tuesdays and Linux Patch Wednesdays, Year 2023 in Review. Hello everyone! It has been 3 months since the last episode. I spent most of this time improving my Vulristics project. So in this episode, let’s take a look at what’s been done.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239139

Also, let’s take a look at the Microsoft Patch Tuesdays vulnerabilities, Linux Patch Wednesdays vulnerabilities and some other interesting vulnerabilities that have been released or updated in the last 3 months. Finally, I’d like to end this episode with a reflection on how my 2023 went and what I’d like to do in 2024.

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October 2023: back to Positive Technologies, Vulristics updates, Linux Patch Wednesday, Microsoft Patch Tuesday, PhysTech VM lecture

October 2023: back to Positive Technologies, Vulristics updates, Linux Patch Wednesday, Microsoft Patch Tuesday, PhysTech VM lecture. Hello everyone! October was an interesting and busy month for me. I started a new job, worked on my open source Vulristics project, and analyzed vulnerabilities using it. Especially Linux vulnerabilities as part of my new Linux Patch Wednesday project. And, of course, analyzed Microsoft Patch Tuesday as well. In addition, at the end of October I was a guest lecturer at MIPT/PhysTech university. But first thing first.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239138

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September 2023: VM courses, Bahasa Indonesia, Russian Podcasts, Goodbye Tinkoff, MS Patch Tuesday, Qualys TOP 20, Linux, Forrester, GigaOm, R-Vision VM

September 2023: VM courses, Bahasa Indonesia, Russian Podcasts, Goodbye Tinkoff, MS Patch Tuesday, Qualys TOP 20, Linux, Forrester, GigaOm, R-Vision VM. Hello everyone! On the last day of September, I decided to record another retrospective episode on how my Vulnerability Management month went.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239136

September was quite a busy month for me.

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How Debian OVAL content is structured

How Debian OVAL content is structured. Hello everyone! As we saw in the last episode, the results of vulnerability detection for one host produced by two different APIs can vary greatly. Therefore, in order to find out the truth, it is necessary to understand what vulnerability data is provided by the Linux distribution vendor and how this data is structured.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239114

Why is it important to do this? Because using data from a Linux distribution vendor, we can ask vulnerability detection API vendors questions: why are you detecting in a different way than described in this data? And then we will understand what caused the difference. And we will either adjust the API for vulnerability detection, or we will adjust the content of the Linux distribution vendor. Either way, it will be a success! In any case, the transparency of the vulnerability detection process will increase.

Last time we looked at vulnerabilities for Debian host and Debian Docker base image. So let’s continue with Debian. In particular, with the official Debian OVAL (Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language) content.

Debian OVAL content can be downloaded from the https://debian.org/security/oval/ website. For Debian 11.6 it will be https://debian.org/security/oval/oval-definitions-bullseye.xml (~48M).

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How to Perform a Free Ubuntu Vulnerability Scan with OpenSCAP and Canonical’s Official OVAL Content

How to Perform a Free Ubuntu Vulnerability Scan with OpenSCAP and Canonical’s Official OVAL Content. Hello everyone! Five years ago I wrote a blogpost about OpenSCAP. But it was only about the SCAP Workbench GUI application and how to use it to detect security misconfigurations.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239104

This time, I will install the OpenSCAP command line tool on Ubuntu and use it to check for vulnerabilities on my local host.

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End of CentOS Linux. Where to migrate?

End of CentOS Linux. Where to migrate? Hello everyone! As you probably know, CentOS Linux, the main Enterprise-level Linux server distribution, will soon disappear. It wasn’t hard to predict when RedHat acquired CentOS in 2014, and now it is actually happening. End of life of CentOS Linux 8 was 31.12.2021. There won’t be CentOS Linux as downstream for RedHat anymore. Only CentOS Stream, that will be upstream for RedHat, more or less a testing distro like Fedora.

Of course, it is a matter of debate whether security guys can actually decide which Linux distributions a company will use and set that as a requirement. But in any case, the security guys will definitely take part in the decision. I made a poll in my Telegram channel. 113 people voted. So, let’s take a look at the results and discuss which of the Linux distributions we can recommend to IT teams.

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