ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Common Vulnerability Scoring System

Suppose you have a game where you have to defend a castle from attackers. You have different tools to help you, like a bow, a sword, and a shield. If the attackers have weak weapons, you can easily protect the castle, and if they have stronger weapons, it becomes more difficult to defend.

In cybersecurity, we also have to defend our systems, like our computers or websites, from attackers who use different types of tools, like viruses, malware, or hacks. To help measure how hard it is to defend against these attacks, people created a scoring system called Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

The CVSS looks at different factors, like how severe the attack is, how easy it is for an attacker to carry out the attack, and how much damage the attack can cause. Just like in the castle game, if an attack is severe, easy to carry out, and can cause a lot of damage, the CVSS score will be higher.

The CVSS also provides a score between 0-10, where 10 is the highest possible score, to rate how vulnerable a system is to the attack. This score helps people understand how much they need to worry about a specific attack and what they need to do to defend against it.

In summary, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is like a scoring system used in a game to measure how hard it is to defend against attacks in cybersecurity. It looks at how severe the attack is, how easy it is for attackers to carry out the attack, and how much damage the attack can cause. It then provides a score between 0-10 to rate how vulnerable a system is to the attack.