Decoding Dependency Risks: A Quantitative Study of Vulnerabilities in the Maven Ecosystem
Costain Nachuma, Md Mosharaf Hossan, Asif Kamal Turzo, Minhaz F. Zibran
TL;DR
This paper investigates dependency vulnerabilities in the Maven ecosystem using a large-scale dataset from Maven Central, leveraging CVE and CWE mappings to trace weaknesses through release graphs. It introduces risk metrics—Frequency $\\mathcal{F}$, Danger Value $\\mathcal{D}$, and Risk Score $\\mathcal{R}$—to rank CWEs and identifies Maven-unique weaknesses such as CWE-6, CWE-40, CWE-770, and CWE-86. Key findings show 31.39% of the latest releases are directly affected and 62.89% are affected transitively, with 35.04% free of both, underscoring the dominance of transitive risk and the need for deeper dependency analysis and automated mitigation. The study proposes proactive strategies for dependency vetting, targeted CWEs remediation, and coordinated maintenance practices, and provides a replication package to enable reproducibility and broader ecosystem insights.
Abstract
This study investigates vulnerabilities within the Maven ecosystem by analyzing a comprehensive dataset of 14,459,139 releases. Our analysis reveals the most critical weaknesses that pose significant threats to developers and their projects as they look to streamline their development tasks through code reuse. We show risky weaknesses, those unique to Maven, and emphasize those becoming increasingly dangerous over time. Furthermore, we reveal how vulnerabilities subtly propagate, impacting 31.39% of the 635,003 latest releases through direct dependencies and 62.89% through transitive dependencies. Our findings suggest that improper handling of input and mismanagement of resources pose the most risk. Additionally, Insufficient session-ID length in J2EE configuration and no throttling while allocating resources uniquely threaten the Maven ecosystem. We also find that weaknesses related to improper authentication and managing sensitive data without encryption have quickly gained prominence in recent years. These findings emphasize the need for proactive strategies to mitigate security risks in the Maven ecosystem.