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What is OVAL

OVAL is an acronym that stands for Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language. It is an international open standard for describing vulnerabilities and how to look for them. The MITRE Corporation developed OVAL over 20 years ago and first announced it on December 10, 2002. MITRE is now transitioning OVAL over to the Center for Internet Security (CIS). OVAL is the intellectual property of the US Federal Government (US DHS) to ensure it remains open and freely available.

The MITRE Corporation is a private not-for-profit US-based company initially funded by the US Department of Homeland Security (US DHS) to provide engineering and technical guidance for the federal government. To read more about the MITRE Corporation click here.

Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for the CIS Controls® and CIS Benchmarks™ globally recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data.

Nanitor uses OVAL as their bases for all vulnerability checks.

For more details about OVAL check out the following links - Home / Oval Repository (cisecurity.org) - Frequently Asked Questions | OVAL Documentation (ovalproject.github.io) - Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language - Wikipedia

Vulnerability OVAL Feed Coverage

On a device's detail page, the Vulnerability OVAL Feed Coverage panel shows whether that device has the latest OVAL vulnerability checks:

  • Up to date: The device has reported using the current OVAL feed.
  • Outdated: The device's last reported feed generation date is behind the server's current feed. Hover the info icon to see how many days behind it is. This usually means the device hasn't checked in recently. Once it checks in again, the status should update to "Up to date."
  • No OVAL coverage: This device doesn't use a Vulnerability OVAL feed at all. It may still be covered by other vulnerability detection methods.

You can also add a Vulnerability OVAL Coverage column to the device list (via the column settings) to see this status across all your devices at once, and filter by it.