Aggregating CVSS Base Scores for Semantics-Rich Network Security Metrics

Published

October 11, 2012

Author(s)

Pengsu Cheng, Lingyu Wang, Sushil Jajodia, Anoop Singhal

Abstract

A network security metric is desirable in evaluating the effectiveness of security solutions in distributed systems. Aggregating CVSS scores of individual vulnerabilities provides a practical approach to network security metric. However, existing approaches to aggregating CVSS scores usually cause useful semantics of individual scores to be lost in the aggregated result. In this apper, we address this issue through two novel approaches. First, instead of taking each base score as an input, our approach drills down to the underlying base metric level where dependency relationships have well-defined semantics. Second, our approach interprets and aggregates the base metrics from three different aspects in order to preserve corresponding semantics of the individual scores. Finally, we confirm the advantages of our approaches through simulation.

Proceedings Title

IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS) Conference

Conference Dates

October 8-11, 2012

Conference Location

Irvine, CA, US

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/SRDS.2012.4

Local Download

Keywords

CVSS, security metrics, security risk, threats

Citation

Cheng, P. , Wang, L. , Jajodia, S. and Singhal, A. (2012), Aggregating CVSS Base Scores for Semantics-Rich Network Security Metrics, IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS) Conference, Irvine, CA, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/SRDS.2012.4, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=911327 (Accessed October 16, 2025)