PKG-VUL: Security Vulnerability Evaluation and Patch Framework for Package-Based Systems

A security vulnerability evaluation and patch framework called PKG‐VUL is proposed, which evaluates the software installed on hosts to decide whether the hosts are vulnerable and then applies patches to vulnerable hosts and its performance in terms of devised criteria is demonstrated.

Abstract

In information security and network management, attacks based on vulnerabilities have grown in importance. Malicious attackers break into hosts using a variety of techniques. The most common method is to exploit known vulnerabilities. Although patches have long been available for vulnerabilities, system administrators have generally been reluctant to patch their hosts immediately because they perceive the patches to be annoying and complex. To solve these problems, we propose a security vulnerability evaluation and patch framework called PKG-VUL, which evaluates the software installed on hosts to decide whether the hosts are vulnerable and then applies patches to vulnerable hosts. All these operations are accomplished by the widely used simple network management protocol (SNMP). Therefore, system administrators can easily manage their vulnerable hosts through PKG-VUL included in the SNMP-based network management systems as a module. The evaluation results demonstrate the applicability of PKG-VUL and its performance in terms of devised criteria.