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27 Feb 2008: Three years of Enterprise Linux 4

It sometimes seems like the Security Response Team at Red Hat are pushing security updates every day, but actually a default installation of Enterprise Linux 4 AS was vulnerable to only 7 critical security issues in the first three years since release. But to get a picture of the risk you need to do more than count vulnerabilities.

My full risk report was published yesterday in Red Hat Magazine and reveals the state of security since the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 including metrics, key vulnerabilities, and the most common ways users were affected by security issues.

"Red Hat knew about 49% of the security vulnerabilities that we fixed in advance of them being publicly disclosed. For those issues, the average notice was 21 calendar days, although the median was much lower, with half the private issues having advance notice of 8 days or less."

Created: 27 Feb 2008
Tagged as: metrics, red hat, security