27 Feb 2013: Enterprise Linux 6.3 to 6.4 risk report

You can read my Enterprise Linux 6.3 to 6.4 risk report on the Red Hat Security Blog.

"for all packages, from release of 6.3 up to and including 6.4, we shipped 108 advisories to address 311 vulnerabilities. 18 advisories were rated critical, 28 were important, and the remaining 62 were moderate and low."
"Updates to correct 77 of the 78 critical vulnerabilities were available via Red Hat Network either the same day or the next calendar day after the issues were public. The other one was in OpenJDK 1.60 where the update took 4 calendar days (over a weekend)."

And if you are interested in how the figures were calculated, here is the working out:

Note that we can't just use a date range because we've pushed some RHSA the weeks before 6.4 that were not included in the 6.4 spin. These issues will get included when we do the 6.4 to 6.5 report (as anyone installing 6.4 will have got them when they first updated).
So just after 6.4 before anything else was pushed that day:
** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 server (all packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20130221 (835 days)
** 397 advisories (C=55 I=109 L=47 M=186 )
** 1151 vulnerabilities (C=198 I=185 L=279 M=489 )

** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server (default installation packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20130221 (835 days)
** 177 advisories (C=11 I=71 L=19 M=76 )
** 579 vulnerabilities (C=35 I=133 L=159 M=252 )
And we need to exclude errata released before 2013-02-21 but not in 6.4:
RHSA-2013:0273 [critical, default]
RHSA-2013:0275 [important, not default]
RHSA-2013:0272 [critical, not default]
RHSA-2013:0271 [critical, not default]
RHSA-2013:0270 [moderate, not default]
RHSA-2013:0269 [moderate, not default]
RHSA-2013:0250 [moderate, default]
RHSA-2013:0247 [important, not default]
RHSA-2013:0245 [critical, default]
RHSA-2013:0219 [moderate, default]
RHSA-2013:0216 [important, default]

Default vulns from above: critical:12 important:2 moderate:16 low:3
Non-Default vulns from above: critical:4 important:2 moderate:5 low:0
This gives us "Fixed between GA and 6.4 iso":
** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 server (all packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20130221 (835 days)
** 386 advisories (C=51 I=106 L=47 M=182 )
** 1107 vulnerabilities (C=182 I=181 L=276 M=468 )

** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server (default installation packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20130221 (835 days)
** 172 advisories (C=9 I=70 L=19 M=74 )
** 546 vulnerabilities (C=23 I=131 L=156 M=236 )
And taken from the last report "Fixed between GA and 6.3 iso":
** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 server (all packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20120620 (589 days)
** 278 advisories (C=33 I=78 L=31 M=136 )
** 796 vulnerabilities (C=104 I=140 L=196 M=356 )

** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server (default installation packages)
** Dates: 20101110 - 20120620 (589 days)
** 134 advisories (C=6 I=56 L=15 M=57 )
** 438 vulnerabilities (C=16 I=110 L=126 M=186 )
Therefore between 6.3 iso and 6.4 iso:
** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 server (all packages)
** Dates: 20120621 - 20130221 (246 days)
** 108 advisories (C=18 I=28 L=16 M=46 )
** 311 vulnerabilities (C=78 I=41 L=80 M=112 )

** Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server (default installation packages)
** Dates: 20120621 - 20130221 (246 days)
** 38 advisories (C=3 I=14 L=4 M=17 )
** 108 vulnerabilities (C=7 I=21 L=30 M=50 )
Note: although we have 3 default criticals, they are in openjdk-1.6.0, but we only call Java issues critical if they can be exploited via a browser, and in RHEL6 the Java browser plugin is in the icedtea-web package, which isn't a default package. So that means on a default install you don't get Java plugins running in your browser, so really these are not default criticals in RHEL6 default at all.

Created: 27 Feb 2013
Tagged as: metrics, red hat, rhel6, security