Highest Severity in report summary reported as "Unknown"

[marcelstoer]

Describe the bug
There is a situation where the "Highest Severity" in the report summary is reported as "Unknown" when details shown that it's in fact HIGH or CRITICAL. CVSS is higher than 7.

Version of dependency-check used
The problem occurs using version 6.5.3 of the Maven plugin.

Log file

[INFO] --- dependency-check-maven:6.5.3:aggregate (default-cli) @ cucumber ---
[INFO] Checking for updates
[...]

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[INFO] Analysis Started
[INFO] Finished Archive Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished File Name Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Jar Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Dependency Merging Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Version Filter Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Hint Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Created CPE Index (1 seconds)
[INFO] Finished CPE Analyzer (2 seconds)
[INFO] Finished False Positive Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished NVD CVE Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished RetireJS Analyzer (1 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Sonatype OSS Index Analyzer (1 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Vulnerability Suppression Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Finished Dependency Bundling Analyzer (0 seconds)
[INFO] Analysis Complete (5 seconds)
[INFO] Writing report to: /Users/marcelstoer/*********/target/dependency-check-report.html
[WARNING] 

One or more dependencies were identified with known vulnerabilities in Cucumber to AsciiDoc Generator:

commons-io-2.6.jar (pkg:maven/commons-io/[email protected], cpe:2.3:a:apache:commons_io:2.6:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) : CVE-2021-29425
junit-4.12.jar (pkg:maven/junit/[email protected], cpe:2.3:a:junit:junit4:4.12:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) : CVE-2020-15250
messages-14.0.1.jar/META-INF/maven/com.google.guava/guava/pom.xml (pkg:maven/com.google.guava/[email protected], cpe:2.3:a:google:guava:29.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) : CVE-2020-8908
messages-14.0.1.jar/META-INF/maven/com.google.protobuf/protobuf-java/pom.xml (pkg:maven/com.google.protobuf/[email protected], cpe:2.3:a:google:protobuf-java:3.14.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) : CVE-2021-22569
plexus-utils-1.5.15.jar (pkg:maven/org.codehaus.plexus/[email protected], cpe:2.3:a:plexus-utils_project:plexus-utils:1.5.15:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) : CVE-2017-1000487, Directory traversal in org.codehaus.plexus.util.Expand, Possible XML Injection


See the dependency-check report for more details.


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  09:25 min
[INFO] Finished at: 2022-02-25T09:43:18+01:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.owasp:dependency-check-maven:6.5.3:aggregate (default-cli) on project cucumber: 
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] One or more dependencies were identified with vulnerabilities that have a CVSS score greater than or equal to '7.0': 
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] plexus-utils-1.5.15.jar: CVE-2017-1000487
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] See the dependency-check report for more details.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Not sure...I think adding plexus-utils-1.5.15.jar to any Maven project should yield this.

Expected behavior
"Highest Severity" should always report the highest that was found.

Additional context
See reported details (for the relevant dependency) below. I am not sure how to correctly interpret this but I see both HIGH & CRITICAL and "Unscored".

[aikebah]

"Highest Severity" should always report the highest that was found.

An unknown (because not CVSS-scored) severity level in my view should always be assumed to be the worst possible score - until proven otherwise by assigning it the appropriate CVSS score, so I tend to say that 'unknown' is properly labeled as the highest found severity (base score 10.0 until proven otherwise)

[marcelstoer]

'unknown' is properly labeled as the highest found severity (base score 10.0 until proven otherwise)

I agree but I think my point is that CVE-2017-1000487 actually does have a score; 7.5 with CVSSv2 and 9.8 with CVSSv3.

Or...do I have to read this as

• plexus-utils-1.5.15 has three issues
• one of them is CVE-2017-1000487 with scores
• but there are two others w/o CVE number (XML injection, dir traversal) and thus unscored?

[aikebah]

The latter is the correct interpretation. There are 3 vulnerabilities found for the library, one scored and 2 unscored

[marcelstoer]

Understood, thanks. Looks like a corner case then. If the scored vulnerability is CRITICAL then it's irrelevant what the unscored ones are effectively. The overall severity should be CRITICAL.

[aikebah]

@jeremylong @marcelstoer Have taken a look how we might improve here and as a proof-of-concept updated the vulnerability natural order and updated the HTML report to take advantage of it in branch issue-4112 would like to hear your thoughts on this.
The code on the branch will list plexus-utils appropriately as highest severity CRITICAL (based on the fact that the highest ranking severity of 'known severiy' issues is already a CVSS v3 CRITICAL issue)