Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

Mission

The Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) is an open, data-driven effort for estimating the likelihood (probability) that a software vulnerability will be exploited in the wild. Our goal is to assist network defenders to better prioritize vulnerability remediation efforts. While other industry standards have been useful for capturing innate characteristics of a vulnerability and provide measures of severity, they are limited in their ability to assess threat. EPSS fills that gap because it uses current threat information from CVE and real-world exploit data. The EPSS model produces a probability score between 0 and 1 (0 and 100%). The higher the score, the greater the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited.

If you would like to join the EPSS special interest group, email us at epss-chairs@first.org. Anyone is welcome to join our mailing list and Slack. We meet every other Friday at 11 am eastern time, GMT -5.

Alternatively, if you would like to receive email updates about EPSS news and announcements, please subscribe to our low-volume EPSS-news list:

Important Update to EPSS

The latest update to the EPSS model was released on February 4th, 2022.

Goals & Deliverables

We currently produce EPSS scores for all CVEs in a published state. In addition, the EPSS SIG is working to improve the maturity of data collection and analysis in order to provide near-real time assessments of all publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. This requires developing partnerships with data providers and establishing an infrastructure from which we can provide a publicly-accessible interface for EPSS scores. We are already ingesting multiple open and commercial datasets, and our most critical data are those that can identify instances of actual vulnerability exploitation (i.e. exploits in the wild), which can come from many sources: intrusion detection systems, honeypots, network observatories, malware analysis and detection efforts, and other sensor networks.

If you know of any potential data that could improve this effort, please let us know! We can be reached at epss-chairs@first.org.

Usage Agreement

EPSS is an emerging standard developed by a volunteer group of researchers, practitioners, academics and government personnel. We grant the use of EPSS scores freely to the public, subject to the conditions below. We reserve the right to update the model and these webpages periodically, as necessary, though we will make every attempt to provide sufficient notice to users in the event of material changes. While membership in the EPSS SIG is not required to use or implement EPSS, however, we ask that if you are using EPSS, that you provide appropriate attribution where possible. EPSS can be cited either from this website (e.g. "See EPSS at https://www.first.org/epss), or as: Jay Jacobs, Sasha Romanosky, Benjamin Edwards, Michael Roytman, Idris Adjerid, (2021), Exploit Prediction Scoring System, Digital Threats Research and Practice, 2(3)

Chairs

Creators

SIG Members and Contributors

FIRST Support

All of us are very grateful to Grace Staley and Guilherme Capilé for their administrative and technical support.