Advisory Mining -- Finding Incomplete Fixes

When to Use

Looking for high-acceptance-rate findings. Incomplete fix variants have ~95% acceptance rate because:

1. The vulnerability class is already acknowledged
2. The fix proves the maintainer cares about security
3. The variant proves the fix was insufficient

Process

Step 1: Find Recent Advisories

# GitHub Advisory API -- recent npm advisories
gh api graphql -f query='
{
  securityAdvisories(first: 20, orderBy: {field: PUBLISHED_AT, direction: DESC}, ecosystem: NPM) {
    nodes {
      ghsaId
      summary
      severity
      publishedAt
      vulnerabilities(first: 5) {
        nodes {
          package { name ecosystem }
          vulnerableVersionRange
          firstPatchedVersion { identifier }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}'

# Search by keyword
gh api "/advisories?ecosystem=npm&keyword=injection&per_page=20"
gh api "/advisories?ecosystem=pip&keyword=traversal&per_page=20"

Step 2: Read the Patch Diff

For each advisory:

1. Find the fix commit (linked in the advisory or CHANGELOG)
2. Read the diff carefully
3. Ask: what did they fix? What did they NOT fix?

# Find security-related commits
git log --oneline --all | grep -i "security\|fix\|vuln\|CVE\|patch\|sanitize"

# Read the patch
git show <commit_hash>
git diff <before_commit>..<fix_commit>

Step 3: Check for Incomplete Fix Patterns

Common incomplete fixes:

Step 4: Search for Same Pattern in Other Packages

If the vulnerability is in a common pattern (e.g., path.join without validation), search for it in similar packages:

# Use grep.app to find same pattern across repos
# See cross-pollination skill for details

Step 5: Verify the Variant

Apply the fp-check skill to verify the variant is real before submitting.

NVD API

# Search NVD for CVEs by keyword
curl "https://services.nvd.nist.gov/rest/json/cves/2.0?keywordSearch=xml+parser+javascript"

# Search by CPE
curl "https://services.nvd.nist.gov/rest/json/cves/2.0?cpeName=cpe:2.3:a:vendor:product:*"

CVSS Guidance

Variant findings typically get:

• Same CVSS as original if the variant has same impact
• Higher CVSS if the variant bypasses the fix AND adds new impact
• Lower CVSS if the variant has additional prerequisites

References

• Diff Analysis -- How to read security patches
• GHSA API -- GitHub Advisory API usage