A look at the National Vulnerability Database statistics will reveal that the number of vulnerabilities found yearly has greatly increased since 2003:

Average yearly increase (including the 2002-2003 decline): 48%

6605*1.48= 9775

So, that’s not quite 9999, but fairly close.  There’s enough variance that hitting 9999 in 2007 seems a plausible event.  If not in 2007, then it seems likely that we’ll hit 9999 in 2008.  So, what does it matter?



MITRE’s CVE effort uses a numbering scheme for vulnerabilities that can accomodate only 9999 vulnerabilities:  CVE-YEAR-XXXX.  Many products and vulnerability databases that are CVE-compatible (e.g., my own Cassandra service, CIRDB, etc…) use a field of fixed size just big enough for that format.  We’re facing a problem similar, although much smaller in scope, to the year-2000 overflow.  When the board of editors of the CVE was formed, the total number of vulnerabilities known, not those found yearly, was in the hundreds.  A yearly number of 9999 seemed astronomical;  I’m sure that anyone who would have brought up that as a concern back then would have been laughed at.  I felt at the time that it would take a security apocalypse to reach that.  Yet there we are, and a fair warning to everyone using or developing CVE-compatible products.



Kudos to the National Vulnerability Database and the MITRE CVE teams for keeping up under the onslaught.  I’m impressed.