- Attack Vector: Local
- The vulnerable system is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or through terminal emulation (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., using social engineering techniques to trick a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
- Attack Complexity: High
- The successful attack depends on the evasion or circumvention of security-enhancing techniques in place that would otherwise hinder the attack. These include: Evasion of exploit mitigation techniques, for example, circumvention of address space randomization (ASLR) or data execution prevention (DEP) must be performed for the attack to be successful; Obtaining target-specific secrets. The attacker must gather some target-specific secret before the attack can be successful. A secret is any piece of information that cannot be obtained through any amount of reconnaissance. To obtain the secret the attacker must perform additional attacks or break otherwise secure measures (e.g. knowledge of a secret key may be needed to break a crypto channel). This operation must be performed for each attacked target.
- Attack Requirements: Present
- The successful attack depends on the presence of specific deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These include: a race condition must be won to successfully exploit the vulnerability (the successfulness of the attack is conditioned on execution conditions that are not under full control of the attacker, or the attack may need to be launched multiple times against a single target before being successful); the attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim (e.g. vulnerabilities requiring an on-path attacker).
- Privileges Required: Low
- The attacker requires privileges that provide basic capabilities that are typically limited to settings and resources owned by a single low-privileged user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
- User Interaction: Passive
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires limited interaction by the targeted user with the vulnerable system and the attacker’s payload. These interactions would be considered involuntary and do not require that the user actively subvert protections built into the vulnerable system.
- Vulnerable system confidentiality: High
- There is a total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all information within the Vulnerable System 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.
- Vulnerable system integrity: Low
- Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Vulnerable System.
- Vulnerable system availability: None
- There is no impact to availability within the Vulnerable System.
- Subsequent system confidentiality: High
- There is a total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the Subsequent System 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.
- Subsequent system integrity: Low
- Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Subsequent System.
- Subsequent system availability: None
- There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
- Safety: Present
- Consequences of the vulnerability meet definition of IEC 61508 consequence categories of "marginal," "critical," or "catastrophic."
- Automatable: Yes
- Attackers can reliably automate all 4 steps of the kill chain. These steps are reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery, and exploitation (e.g., the vulnerability is “wormable”).
- Value Density: Concentrated
- The vulnerable system is rich in resources. Heuristically, such systems are often the direct responsibility of “system operators” rather than users. An example of Concentrated (think: broad) Value Density would be an attack on a central email server.
- Vulnerability Response Effort: Moderate
- The actions required to respond to a vulnerability require some effort on behalf of the consumer and could cause minimal service impact to implement. Examples include: simple remote update, disabling of a subsystem, or a low-touch software upgrade such as a driver update.
Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.