CVE Research and Enrichment in JFrog Security
The Challenge
Modern software artifacts often contain hundreds or even thousands of CVEs, making it impractical to address every single one. Security teams typically rely on CVSS scores and technical security advisories to prioritize vulnerabilities, but this approach has several limitations:
- Limited risk insight: CVSS scores alone do not provide a clear picture of real-world risk.
- No exploitability analysis: They do not assess the likelihood of exploitation in actual attack scenarios.
- Generic scoring formulas: The fixed weights in CVSS calculations may not accurately reflect the true risk of a CVE.
- Incomplete technical advisories: Security bulletins often lack detailed conditions for exploitation or alternative mitigation options beyond upgrading the affected software.
Given these challenges, organizations struggle to determine which vulnerabilities pose an actual threat and how to efficiently prioritize fixes.
The JFrog Solution: CVE Research and Enrichment
JFrog’s Security Research and Threat Intelligence teams continuously analyze both new and existing CVEs to assess their real-world exploitability and impact. This analysis results in a JFrog Research Severity Score, which provides deeper insights into each CVE, including:
- Exploitability analysis – How likely is the vulnerability to be weaponized?
- Real-world attack data – Has this CVE been used in documented cyberattacks?
- Impact assessment – What is the potential damage if exploited?
- Severity refinement – Adjustments based on deeper technical evaluation, beyond just the CVSS score.
How JFrog Research Enhances CVEs
After a thorough analysis, JFrog enriches CVEs with critical insights that help security teams make informed decisions:
- Vulnerable Function Identification – Pinpoints which function(s) are at risk and what type of calls make them exploitable.
- Non-Exploitable Scenarios – Highlights cases where the function is disabled or not compiled, making the vulnerability ineffective.
- Hard-to-Exploit Configurations – Identifies settings or conditions that reduce exploitability.
- Impacted Software Components & Versions – Specifies exact software versions affected.
- Fix and Mitigation Options – Includes patches, workarounds, and configuration changes to reduce risk, even if upgrading is not an option.
- Deployment-Level Mitigations – Security strategies that can be applied without modifying the source code.
- Relevant CPU Architectures – Clarifies if a vulnerability only affects specific processor architectures.
What Should You Do with JFrog Research-Enriched CVEs?
Prioritize the highest-risk vulnerabilities first. CVEs with the highest JFrog Security Severity Score are most likely to be targeted by real-world attackers. These should be addressed immediately to drastically lower the risk of exploitation.
Leverage JFrog’s Fix and Mitigation Options:
- Some fixes are quick and easy, while others may require more effort.
- JFrog provides alternative mitigation strategies, including patching, code fixes, configuration changes, or deployment-level protections.
By utilizing JFrog’s CVE Research and Enrichment, organizations can prioritize threats more effectively, allocate resources efficiently, and secure their software with confidence.