13.6. About vulnerabilities

In online mode, Central fetches the vulnerability definitions every 5 minutes from a single feed. This feed combines vulnerability definitions from upstream sources, and it refreshes every 3 hours. The address of the feed is https://definitions.stackrox.io.

You can change the frequency of the default query from Central to the definitions.stackrox.io feed by setting the ROX_SCANNER_VULN_UPDATE_INTERVAL environment variable. Run the following command:

$ oc -n stackrox set env deploy/central ROX_SCANNER_VULN_UPDATE_INTERVAL=<value>

This variable applies to the connection between Central and the definitions.stackrox.io feed. Both the StackRox Scanner and Scanner V4 use vulnerability data from Central that is obtained from this feed. The StackRox Scanner’s config map still has an updater.interval parameter for configuring the scanner’s updating frequency, but it no longer includes the fetchFromCentral parameter.

For more information about the vulnerability sources that RHACS uses, see "Vulnerability sources" in "Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes architecture".

The vulnerability management dashboard in the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes portal shows a single Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score for each vulnerability. RHACS shows the CVSS score based on the following criteria:

You can use the API to get the CVSS scores. If CVSS v3 information is available for a vulnerability, the response might include both CVSS v3 and CVSS v2 information.

For a Red Hat Security Advisory (RHSA), the CVSS score is set to the highest CVSS score among all the related CVEs. One RHSA can contain multiple CVEs, and Red Hat sometimes assigns a different score based on how a vulnerability affects other Red Hat products.