Assessing Web Browser Security Vulnerabilities with respect to CVSS

Abstract

Since security vulnerabilities newly discovered in a popular Web browser immediately put a number of users at risk, urgent attention from developers is required to address those vulnerabilities. Analysis of characteristics in the Web browser vulnerabilities can be used to assess security risks and to determine the resources needed to develop patches quickly to handle vulnerabilities discovered. So far, being a new research area, the quantitative aspects of the Web browser vulnerabilities and risk assessments have not been fully investigated. However, due to the importance of Web browser software systems, further detailed studies are required related to the Web browser risk assessment, using rigorous analysis of actual data which can assist decision makers to maximize the returns on their security related efforts. In this paper, quantitative software vulnerability analysis has been presented for major Web browsers with respect to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Further, vulnerability discovery trends in the Web browsers are also investigated. The results show that, almost all the time, vulnerabilities are compromised from remote networks with no authentication required systems. It is also found that a vulnerability discovery model which was originally introduced for operating systems is also applicable to the Web browsers.