The CVE database played a key role in detecting and handling major cyber incidents like WannaCry, SolarWinds Sunburst, and Log4j attacks. This vital resource has supported a global cybersecurity industry worth nearly $40 billion for more than 25 years.
The cybersecurity community now faces a crisis. The MITRE CVE program will run out of funding on April 16, 2025. This threatens the system that helped find and document more than 40,000 vulnerabilities last year. Security professionals worldwide might struggle to identify, communicate and fix cyber threats effectively.
This piece gets into the CVE database crisis and how it could affect security operations. We outline practical steps for security teams to prepare for possible disruptions. You’ll also find alternative vulnerability resources and applicable strategies to keep security practices strong during uncertain times.
Understanding the CVE Database Crisis
The cybersecurity community faces a major crisis as the life-blood of vulnerability management stands close to collapse. MITRE Corporation announced on April 15, 2025, that its contract to maintain the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program would expire the next day. This threatens a system that has documented over 270,000 vulnerabilities since it began [1].
What is happening to the MITRE CVE program
MITRE’s funding to develop, operate, and modernize the CVE database ends on April 16, 2025. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to renew its long-term contract with the nonprofit, which sparked this crisis. New CVEs will stop being added to the program after the expiration date . The historical CVE records will stay available through GitHub, but the CVE program website will eventually shut down [1].
MITRE’s Vice President Yosry Barsoum warned that a break in service would “affect CVE in multiple ways, including deterioration of national vulnerability databases and advisories, tool vendors, incident response operations, and all manner of critical infrastructure”.
Why the funding lapse matters
The CVE program has served as a crucial part of cybersecurity for over 25 years. Since 1999, it has provided a common taxonomy for cybersecurity solutions and organizations to track vulnerabilities [2]. The program supports a cybersecurity vendor market worth more than $35 billion. It provides essential data to products in vulnerability management, threat intelligence, and endpoint detection [3].
Security professionals cannot quickly assess which software flaws need immediate attention without the CVE database. This disruption affects:
- Vulnerability identification and prioritization
- Coordinated disclosure timelines
- Automated defense systems
- Global security intelligence sharing
Brian Martin, vulnerability historian, pointed out that every company relying on CVE/NVD for vulnerability intelligence “is going to experience swift and sharp pains to their vulnerability management program” [4].
Timeline of the current situation
Recent events show a troubled situation:
- February 2024: NIST reported CVE submissions jumped 32% in 2024, creating processing delays
- March 2025: NVD analyzed fewer than 300 CVEs, leaving 30,000+ vulnerabilities backlogged
- April 15, 2025: MITRE warned stakeholders about the contract ending soon
- April 16, 2025: Funding expires; CISA confirms the lapse
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) acknowledged the problem and stated they are “urgently working to alleviate effects and to maintain CVE services on which global stakeholders rely” [4]. The future of this vital resource remains uncertain. Security teams worldwide must now scramble to adapt their vulnerability management processes.
Immediate Impacts on Security Operations
Security operations worldwide face major disruptions as the CVE database crisis continues. Security professionals must now guide themselves through a fast-changing landscape with limited visibility and direction.
Vulnerability identification challenges
The CVE program’s breakdown creates immediate problems for security teams. About 42% of CVEs don’t have essential metadata like severity scores and product information. Security teams waste valuable threat-response time because they must “gather and combine information in a piecemade fashion” [7]. Teams find it hard to even confirm if they’re talking about the same vulnerabilities when they plan their responses.
Patch management disruptions
Teams can’t prioritize patches without consistent CVE identifiers. They can’t quickly assess which software flaws need immediate fixes, which slows down their fix efforts [7]. The disruption leaves organizations “in the dark about what it all means and how urgent newly found vulnerabilities are”. This creates dangerous chances for attackers. Teams must now manually search for vulnerability information from each vendor—a process that wastes time and leads to mistakes.
Threat intelligence gaps
Defense tools stop working well when CVE data becomes unreliable. Brian Martin points out that “every company that relies on CVE/NVD for vulnerability intelligence is going to experience swift and sharp pains to their vulnerability management program”. Tools that need CVE metadata might “stop receiving timely or trusted CVE information, breaking sync pipelines” [3]. Thousands of National/Regional CERTs worldwide also lose their main source of free vulnerability intelligence.
Compliance and reporting issues
CISA’s “Known Exploited Vulnerabilities” (KEV) catalog—a vital regulatory reference point—relies completely on CVEs [3]. Organizations can’t report compliance properly without this foundation. They face higher compliance risks because delays affect their decision-making [5]. This makes it harder to follow rules like PCI DSS and HIPAA. Small organizations with limited resources face bigger problems because they can’t track vulnerabilities on their own across multiple sources.
How to Search Alternative Vulnerability Resources
Security professionals need reliable alternatives to maintain vulnerability awareness because CVE database access faces threats. Several resources can help bridge this gap and provide vital vulnerability information.
NIST CVE database access methods
The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) remains available through multiple channels despite the current crisis. Users can download the entire NVD database as an XML feed from the NVD Download and Product Integration Page. NIST provides baseline downloads at midnight UTC daily as zip files (e.g., 2024-04-04_all_CVEs_at_midnight.zip) that stay unchanged for 24 hours [1]. On top of that, it offers hourly delta updates to users who need more frequent synchronization.
GitHub archived CVE records
GitHub has become a crucial backup resource during these uncertain times. The CVEProject/cvelistV5 repository hosts the official CVE List with downloadable CVE Records in the CVE Record Format. Users can access these records by cloning the repository (git clone git@github.com:CVEProject/cvelistV5.git) or downloading zip files from the Releases section [1]. The repository updates every seven minutes through the official CVE Services API.
Vendor-specific security advisories
Vendor’s advisories often reveal vulnerabilities before they appear in CVE/NVD databases. These advisories include detailed descriptions, CVSSv3 metrics, affected product versions, and remediation guidance. Some challenges exist with vendor advisories – rate limiters on webpage access, JavaScript redirects that complicate automated downloads, and localization differences that cause inconsistent publishing.
Open source vulnerability databases
The community offers several alternatives that provide detailed vulnerability coverage:
- OSV.dev: The total vulnerability data comes from 24 sources including GitHub Security Advisories, PyPA, and RustSec using the OSV schema
- OpenCVE: Users can search, filter, and organize CVEs with subscription options for vulnerability notifications [6]
- VulnDB: A commercial version of the former Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) with expanded coverage
- CISA KEV Catalog: A list of actively exploited vulnerabilities that updates within 24 hours of CISA awareness
These alternatives help maintain visibility during this critical time, though none fully replaces the CVE ecosystem’s capabilities.
The Hackability Score as a Potential Complementary Approach
The impending funding crisis for the MITRE CVE program highlights the critical need for robust and efficient methods for understanding and addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities. While the CVE database has served as a cornerstone for vulnerability tracking, the concept of a “Hackability Score” presents a potentially valuable and complementary approach to understanding an organization’s overall security posture.
Unlike a traditional list of vulnerabilities, which can be extensive and overwhelming, the Autobahn Security’s Hackability Score offers a summarized, risk-prioritized view of how easily an organization’s systems could be compromised. By considering the severity of individual vulnerabilities and consolidating them by root cause, this score aims to provide a more actionable metric than simply the total number of identified weaknesses. The claim of potentially saving up to 90% of remediation management time by focusing on root causes suggests a significant efficiency gain.
Furthermore, the normalization of the score based on the number of exposed services allows for a more meaningful comparison between organizations of different sizes. This could provide valuable context that a raw vulnerability count might lack. The Hackability Score’s focus on actionable steps to improve resilience aligns with the ultimate goal of vulnerability management – not just identifying flaws, but also mitigating them effectively.
However, it’s crucial to recognize that the Hackability Score, as described, is different in its fundamental purpose from the CVE database. The CVE database serves as a comprehensive catalog and identifier for publicly known vulnerabilities, which is essential for communication, standardization, and coordinated disclosure across the cybersecurity landscape. The Hackability Score, on the other hand, appears to be a more organization-centric metric focused on quantifying the ease of exploitation.
Therefore, rather than being a direct replacement for the CVE system, a Hackability Score could potentially serve as a valuable alternative or complementary tool. It could provide organizations with an internal, prioritized view of their most critical weaknesses, informed by the broader context of publicly known vulnerabilities (which might still rely on a functioning CVE system for its data). In a future where the traditional CVE program faces limitations, alternative scoring mechanisms like the Hackability Score might become increasingly important for organizations to proactively manage their cyber risks and prioritize remediation efforts effectively.
It is important to note that the effectiveness and widespread adoption of such a score would depend on its accuracy, reliability, and transparency in its calculation methodology. Additionally, its ability to integrate with and leverage information from existing vulnerability databases (potentially including a future, alternative CVE-like system if the current one falters) would be crucial for its overall value to the cybersecurity community.
Conclusion
Security professionals worldwide face tough challenges as the CVE database crisis approaches, putting core vulnerability management at risk. However, practical solutions and alternative approaches can help security operations run smoothly.
During these uncertain times, teams can still access vital vulnerability data through NIST’s NVD downloads, GitHub archives, and vendor advisories. Furthermore, innovative concepts like the Hackability Score offer a complementary perspective by summarizing an organization’s overall security posture and prioritizing remediation efforts based on the ease of exploitation. This approach, which focuses on actionable insights and root cause analysis, could potentially enhance efficiency in vulnerability management.
Organizations must tackle three key areas right now: short-term fixes, better documentation, and updated security tools. These changes, along with careful checks on other vulnerability sources and the potential adoption of alternative risk scoring methodologies, will be crucial to keep security strong if the traditional CVE database faces limitations.
Teams that create complete action plans today will protect their organizations better, whatever happens to the CVE program. Success comes from quick thinking, smart changes, and a willingness to leverage both established resources and innovative alternatives to maintain a strong security posture.
References
[1] – https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5
[2] – https://www.cve.org/ResourcesSupport/FAQs
[3] – https://www.thestack.technology/cve-vulnerability-program-may-collapse-imminently/
[4] – https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-funding-running-out-critical-cyber-vulnerability-database-manager-says-2025-04-15/
[5] – https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=150396
[6] – https://github.com/opencve/opencve
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