Modeling Vulnerability Discovery Process in Major Cryptocurrencies

Abstract

These days, businesses, in both online and offline, have started accepting cryptocurrencies as payment methods. Even in countries like <italic>El Salvador</italic>, cryptocurrencies are recognized as fiat currencies. Meanwhile, publicly known, but not patched software vulnerabilities are security threats to not only software users but also to our society in general. As the status of cryptocurrencies has gradually increased, the impact of security vulnerabilities related to cryptocurrencies on our society has increased as well. In this paper, we first analyze vulnerabilities from the two major cryptocurrency vendors of Bitcoin and Ethereum in a quantitative manner with the respect to the CVSS, to see how the vulnerabilities are roughly structured in those systems. Then we introduce a modified AML vulnerability discovery model for the vulnerability datasets from the two vendors, after showing the original AML dose not accurately represent the vulnerability discovery trends on the datasets. The analysis shows that the modified model performs better than the original AML model for the vulnerability datasets from the major cryptocurrencies.