A framework for measuring the vulnerability of hosts

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for measuring the vulnerability of individual hosts based on current and historical operational data for vulnerabilities and attacks. Previous approaches have not been scalable because they relied on complex manually constructed models, and most approaches have examined software flaws only, not other vulnerabilities such as software misconfiguration and software feature misuse. The framework uses a highly automatable metrics-based approach, producing rapid and consistent measurements for quantitative risk assessment and for attack and vulnerability modeling. In this paper, we propose the framework and its components and describe the work needed to implement them.