During the process of assigning a CVE ID, there is a time period between the assignment and the disclosure, and again between the disclosure and it becoming available on MITRE’s CVE site or NIST’s National Vulnerability Database (NVD). During this period, the ID will be shown as RESERVED.
First, it is important to note that when an ID is part of a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) pool of IDs to potentially be assigned, it is shown in RESERVED status. If an ID is not assigned that year, it is then supposed to be moved to REJECT status the following year per CVE rules. Bit odd they say the reason for the rejection will “will most often be stated“; most often and not always? If a CNA other than MITRE assigns an ID and the researcher and/or vendor later publicly discloses the vulnerability, it may still show as RESERVED. This happens when the CNA fails to notify MITRE despite being stipulated in CNA rules. It can also happen if the CNA notifies MITRE but it slips through the cracks. Pretty simple right?
If MITRE assigns the ID to a researcher, it is a lot more likely to stay in RESERVED status after disclosure because the researcher who publicly discloses the vulnerability doesn’t always notify MITRE. You may ask why MITRE doesn’t open the CVE with details themselves if it is public, and that is a great question! The simple answer is, MITRE does not really monitor public sources for disclosures any longer. Back in the day they would monitor Bugtraq and NTBugtraq and encouraged researchers to just disclose directly to those mail lists. During that time, they also said they monitored four sources for new vulnerability information but notably did not include either mail list, instead including four different summaries being published. I think we can chalk that up to an error in documentation.
For those not familiar with MITRE’s coverage for CVE, consider that they no longer publish three lists of interest. As late as March 6, 2016, MITRE maintained lists of what they considered:
- “Full Coverage Sources” – “For nearly all issues disclosed by the source that could be associated with a CVE entry, there will be an associated CVE entry, regardless of the criticality of the issue. Although a source is named as Full Coverage, we purposely use the phrasing “nearly all issues disclosed” to allow the flexibility to potentially postpone coverage of minor issues.”
- “Partial Coverage Sources” – “The source will be actively monitored but issues will be processed and associated with CVE entries based on a variety of editorial judgments.”
- “Must-Have Products” – “All products listed are considered to be “must have.” This means that we will ensure that a CVE-ID is issued for any public disclosure for the product provided that the following to provisions are met…”
By the end of 2016, that page maintained the same URL but changed content to become what would be their CNA coverage page. By early 2017, the old URL redirected to a new one about requesting a CVE ID and CNA coverage, which is roughly the same as currently available. This is an important shift in how CVE operates as MITRE basically threw in the towel trying to actively monitor disclosures and moved to relying almost entirely on CNAs and researchers coming to them.
The part that is truly baffling to me is that this tax-payer funded project, costing us millions a year, thought that monitoring 48 sources for “full” coverage, 45 sources for “partial” coverages, and guaranteeing 45 products was ever adequate to begin with, and somehow a burden at that point. They also disclaimed that they “actively [monitor] many sources beyond this list. These sources include things like blogs from vulnerability researchers, conference proceedings, and media outlets.” Despite that claim and coverage, MITRE was already missing thousands of vulnerability disclosures a year including ones from sources on their list.
What should worry consumers of CVE is that other vulnerability databases monitor a lot more sources than that for a lot less money. Any claims of it being more complicated or the issue being due to their processes mean there is an incredible amount of red tape or horribly outdated technical processes that were never updated. If another database can monitor literally several thousand sources a week for a fraction of the price, it speaks to MITRE not evolving over the years. Whew, glad that wraps it up!
Sorry, one last thing. Like entries in REJECT status, we can’t trust entries in RESERVED status either. Based on above and how MITRE operates, we know there are bound to be quite a few vulnerabilities where a researcher requested an ID, published details, and did not notify MITRE. Their backwards choice of not monitoring sources for disclosures means a disclosure may sit in RESERVED status for some time. How long? I went poking around a bit for fun and found this one. At the time of this blog, CVE-2000-1253 is still in RESERVED status (archive).
The issue? That was disclosed in 2015, and likely earlier. The actual vulnerability details were public at far back as 2003, maybe earlier. The good news? If you aren’t worried about remote root on a medical device, no need to be worried about this one.