Search for known vulnerabilities in software using software titles or a CPE 2.3 string.

search_vulns can be used to search for known vulnerabilities in software. To achieve this, the tool utilizes a locally built vulnerability database, currently containing:

• CVE information from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD)
• Exploit information from the Exploit-DB (EDB)
• Exploit information from PoC-in-GitHub
• Software currency information from endoflife.date

Using the search_vulns tool, this local information can be queried, either by providing software titles like 'Apache 2.4.39' or by providing a CPE 2.3 string like cpe:2.3:a:sudo_project:sudo:1.8.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.

search_vulns can either be used as a CLI tool or via a web server. It is recommended to use the CLI tool for automated workflows that might be resource-constrained. Otherwise, using the web server is recommended, because it offers more features and flexibility. This includes the ability to achieve more complete results. Also, the presentation of results is clearer and results can be exported for further use.

• The Surprising Complexity of Finding Known Vulnerabilities: A blog post detailing the challenges and motivations behind search_vulns.
• https://search-vulns.usd.de: To be published soon, a public instance hosted by usd AG.
• To be published: A second blog post detailing how search_vulns works in depth, compares with other tools and solves the challenges discussed in the first blog post.

You can perform a quick install by running the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/ra1nb0rn/search_vulns
cd search_vulns
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
git submodule init
git submodule update
./search_vulns.py -u

Alternatively, for a full install, run the install.sh script (note that it is configured to --break-system-packages for installing Python dependencies). First, this script automatically installs the required dependencies. Thereafter it downloads the required software and vulnerability resources (see the Release artifacts). These resources can also be built directly by invoking the install script with the according flag: install.sh --full. Note, however, that this may take more time than simply downloading the resources. Of course, you can also look at the installation script and set up everything manually. Finally, you can also use the provided Dockerfile to build a container:

docker build -t search_vulns .

and then start it:

docker run -it search_vulns

or with an exposed port for the web server:

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:5000:5000 -it search_vulns

Note that here you have to update the host and port accordingly in the app.run call in web_server.py.

search_vulns's usage information is shown in the following:

usage: search_vulns.py [-h] [-u] [--full-update] [-k API_KEY] [-f {json,txt}] [-o OUTPUT]
                       [-q QUERY] [-c CONFIG] [-V] [--cpe-search-threshold CPE_SEARCH_THRESHOLD]
                       [--ignore-general-cpe-vulns] [--include-single-version-vulns]
                       [--use-created-cpes]

Search for known vulnerabilities in software -- Created by Dustin Born (ra1nb0rn)

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u, --update          Download the latest version of the the local vulnerability and software
                        database
  --full-update         Fully (re)build the local vulnerability and software database
  -k API_KEY, --api-key API_KEY
                        NVD API key to use for updating the local vulnerability and software
                        database
  -f {json,txt}, --format {json,txt}
                        Output format, either 'txt' or 'json' (default: 'txt')
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        File to write found vulnerabilities to
  -q QUERY, --query QUERY
                        A query, either software title like 'Apache 2.4.39' or a CPE 2.3 string
  -c CONFIG, --config CONFIG
                        A config file to use (default: config.json)
  -V, --version         Print the version of search_vulns
  --cpe-search-threshold CPE_SEARCH_THRESHOLD
                        Similarity threshold used for retrieving a CPE via the cpe_search tool
  --ignore-general-cpe-vulns
                        Ignore vulnerabilities that only affect a general CPE (i.e. without
                        version)
  --include-single-version-vulns
                        Include vulnerabilities that only affect one specific version of a product
                        when querying a lower version
  --use-created-cpes    If no matching CPE exists in the software database, automatically use a
                        matching CPE created by search_vulns

Note that when querying software with -q you have to put the software information in quotes if it contains any spaces. Also, you can use -q multiple times to make multiple queries at once. For one, a query can be a software name / title like 'Apache 2.4.39' or 'Wordpress 5.7.2'. Furthermore, a query can also be a CPE 2.3 string.

Here are some examples:

• Query Sudo 1.8.2 for known vulnerabilities:

  $ ./search_vulns.py -q 'Sudo 1.8.2'
  
  [+] Sudo 1.8.2 (cpe:2.3:a:sudo_project:sudo:1.8.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*)
  CVE-2019-14287 (CVSSv3.1/8.8): In Sudo before 1.8.28, an attacker with access to a Runas ALL sudoer account can bypass certain policy blacklists and session PAM modules, and can cause incorrect logging, by invoking sudo with a crafted user ID. For example, this allows bypass of !root configuration, and USER= logging, for a "sudo -u \#$((0xffffffff))" command.
  Exploits:  https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/47502
  Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-14287, 2019-10-17
  CVE-2017-1000368 (CVSSv3.0/8.2): Todd Miller's sudo version 1.8.20p1 and earlier is vulnerable to an input validation (embedded newlines) in the get_process_ttyname() function resulting in information disclosure and command execution.
  Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-1000368, 2017-06-05
  [...]

• Query Moodle 3.4.0 for known vulnerabilities:

  $ ./search_vulns.py -q 'Moodle 3.4.0'
  
  [+] Moodle 3.4.0 (cpe:2.3:a:moodle:moodle:3.4.0:-:*:*:*:*:*:*)
  CVE-2018-14630 (CVSSv3.0/8.8): moodle before versions 3.5.2, 3.4.5, 3.3.8, 3.1.14 is vulnerable to an XML import of ddwtos could lead to intentional remote code execution. When importing legacy 'drag and drop into text' (ddwtos) type quiz questions, it was possible to inject and execute PHP code from within the imported questions, either intentionally or by importing questions from an untrusted source.
  Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-14630, 2018-09-17
  CVE-2018-1133 (CVSSv3.0/8.8): An issue was discovered in Moodle 3.x. A Teacher creating a Calculated question can intentionally cause remote code execution on the server, aka eval injection.
  Exploits:  https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/46551
  Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-1133, 2018-05-25
  [...]

Again, note that when search_vulns is initially installed, it takes quite some time to set up the local vulnerability and software database.

It is also possible to run a web server that provides this tool's functionality to clients over the network. web_server.py contains a working example using Flask. Depending on your environment, you may want to modify the server IP and port at the end of this file. To run a simple Flask web server, just run:

./web_server.py

Furthermore, you can use gunicorn to make the web server more scalable; for example by running:

gunicorn --worker-class=gevent --worker-connections=50 --workers=3 --bind '0.0.0.0:8000' wsgi:app

You can read more about choosing good gunicorn settings for your system here. Note, however, that this tool is quite CPU intensive, meaning that scalability is somewhat limited.

Finally, you can also use Nginx as a reverse proxy. A sample configuration file is provided in web_server_files/nginx.conf.sample. Again, you may have to adjust this to your needs. When using Nginx, make sure you have the app running at the configured endpoint(s). For the sample configuration file, for example, you would have to run something similar to the following:

gunicorn --worker-class=gevent --worker-connections=50 --workers=3 --bind 'unix:/tmp/gunicorn.sock' wsgi:app

search_vulns can be configured to use MariaDB as an alternative to the preconfigured SQLite mechanism. A sample configuration file for MariaDB is provided in config_mariadb.json.

Make sure that you adjust the values for MariaDB in the configuration file to your MariaDB deployment (user, password, host and port).

To use MariaDB instead of SQLite for the webserver, simply change the CONFIG_FILE variable in web_server.py to your config file (e.g. config_mariadb.json).

To improve the performance of search_vulns with MariaDB, it is recommend to add the following settings to your MariaDB configuration file (e.g. /etc/mysql/my.cnf):

[mariadb]
query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 192M
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 8G
thread_handling = pool-of-threads

innodb_buffer_pool_size should be set to approximately 80% of available memory (see MariaDB's official documentation).

search_vulns is licensed under the MIT license, see here.