Understanding Software Vulnerabilities in the Maven Ecosystem: Patterns, Timelines, and Risks
Md Fazle Rabbi, Rajshakhar Paul, Arifa Islam Champa, Minhaz F. Zibran
TL;DR
This paper investigates vulnerabilities in the Maven ecosystem, focusing on documentation delays and resolution timelines to improve software supply chain security. It leverages the Goblin framework to construct a Neo4j-based view of Maven Central, analyzing $77,393$ vulnerable releases across $1,411$ libraries and $226$ CWEs, with $3,407$ CVEs and $2,822$ unique CVEs identified. The findings show a small set of CWEs—most notably CWE-$502$ and CWE-$79$—driving $69.07 ext{ extsuperscript{ ext{percent}}}$ of occurrences, and reveal that the mean vulnerability documentation delay is $5.95$ years while mean fix time is $4.4$ years, with some CVEs remaining unfixed for more than a decade. These results inform targeted mitigation and vulnerability management practices in dependency-heavy ecosystems and are complemented by a public replication package.
Abstract
Vulnerabilities in software libraries and reusable components cause major security challenges, particularly in dependency-heavy ecosystems such as Maven. This paper presents a large-scale analysis of vulnerabilities in the Maven ecosystem using the Goblin framework. Our analysis focuses on the aspects and implications of vulnerability types, documentation delays, and resolution timelines. We identify 77,393 vulnerable releases with 226 unique CWEs. On average, vulnerabilities take nearly half a decade to be documented and 4.4 years to be resolved, with some remaining unresolved for even over a decade. The delays in documenting and fixing vulnerabilities incur security risks for the library users emphasizing the need for more careful and efficient vulnerability management in the Maven ecosystem.