Precise (Un)Affected Version Analysis for Web Vulnerabilities

Abstract

Web applications are attractive attack targets given their popularity and large number of vulnerabilities. To mitigate the threat of web vulnerabilities, an important piece of information is their affected versions. However, it is non-trivial to build accurate affected version information because confirming a version as affected or unaffected requires security expertise and huge efforts, while there are usually hundreds of versions to examine. As a result, such information is maintained in a low-quality manner in almost every public vulnerability database. Therefore, it is extremely useful to have a tool that can automatically and precisely examine a large part (even if not all) of the software versions as affected or unaffected.