The CVE Wayback Machine: Measuring Coordinated Disclosure from Exploits against Two Years of Zero-Days

Eric Pauley, Paul Barford, Patrick D. McDaniel

Abstract: Software security depends on coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) from researchers, a process that the community has continually sought to measure and improve. Yet, CVD practices are only as effective as the data that informs them. In this paper, we use DScope, a cloud-based interactive Internet telescope, to build statistical models of vulnerability lifecycles, bridging the data gap in over 20 years of CVD research. By analyzing application-layer Internet scanning traffic over two years, we identify real-world exploitation timelines for 63 threats. We bring this data together with six additional datasets to build a complete birth-to-death model of these vulnerabilities, the most complete analysis of vulnerability lifecycles to date. Our analysis reaches three key recommendations: (1) CVD across diverse vendors shows lower effectiveness than previously thought, (2) intrusion detection systems are underutilized to provide protection for critical vulnerabilities, and (3) existing data sources of CVD can be augmented by novel approaches to Internet measurement. In this way, our vantage point offers new opportunities to improve the CVD process, achieving a safer software ecosystem in practice.