- Attack Vector: Network
- The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
- Attack Complexity: Low
- The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
- 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: High
- The attacker requires privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable system allowing full access to the vulnerable system’s settings and files.
- 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: High
- There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the vulnerable system. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the vulnerable system.
- Vulnerable system availability: High
- There is a total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the Vulnerable System; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).
- Subsequent system confidentiality: None
- There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
- Subsequent system integrity: None
- There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable 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.
Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.