More than 22,000 vulnerabilities were disclosed in 2019 and over one-third had an exploit or a proof-of-concept (PoC) available, Risk Based Security revealed on Tuesday.
The company’s 2019 Year End Vulnerability QuickView Report shows that of the 22,316 new security holes 33% were rated high severity based on their CVSS score. The total number of vulnerabilities was slightly smaller compared to 2018 (23,210 vulnerabilities) and roughly the same as in 2017.
It’s worth noting that thousands of vulnerabilities disclosed last year have not been assigned CVE identifiers.
The vendors with the most disclosed vulnerabilities include Oracle, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Dell and Cisco. Some Linux distributions and open source software are also in the top 10.
A majority of vulnerabilities are disclosed on Patch Tuesday, when major vendors such as Adobe, Microsoft, Siemens and SAP release security updates for their products. The Patch Tuesday updates for August 2019 patched 327 flaws — more than on any other day — with 62% of them coming from Microsoft and Adobe.
According to Risk Based Security, 302 vulnerabilities affecting electronic voting machines (EVM) were disclosed last year and 289 of them have not been patched.
“Only 13 EVM vulnerabilities have a known solution. To make matters worse, of those, only one has a CVE ID assigned and can be found cataloged in the U.S. National Vulnerability Database” commented Brian Martin, VP of vulnerability intelligence at Risk Based Security. “EVMs with vulnerabilities have been used in past elections, and will no doubt be used again in our next elections. It doesn’t matter what politics or beliefs you subscribe to; the essence of democracy is a free, fair and secure election that captures the will of the people. The lack of visibility on this issue should be of deep concern to every American.”
Risk Based Security’s 2019 Year End Vulnerability QuickView Report is available on the company’s website in PDF format.
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