Company
Date Published
Author
David Fadida, JFrog Security Researcher
Word count
2587
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

JFrog's research utilizing the Contextual Analysis feature of JFrog Xray reveals that in the deliberately insecure WebGoat application, only 10 out of 60 reported critical CVEs were truly exploitable. This discovery underscores the effectiveness of Contextual Analysis in distinguishing between applicable and non-applicable vulnerabilities by assessing exploitability factors such as code prerequisites, configuration settings, and running environments. The study highlights that many vulnerabilities remain unexploitable due to missing conditions necessary for their exploitation, demonstrating the importance of focusing on actual exploitability rather than merely the presence of vulnerabilities. This approach not only helps in prioritizing CVEs that demand immediate attention but also reduces the time security teams spend on addressing false positives. The research further indicates that even in a purposefully insecure application like WebGoat, many vulnerabilities remain non-exploitable, emphasizing the complexity of real-world vulnerability exploitation scenarios.