A Large-Scale Study on Vulnerabilities in Linux using Vtopia

As the controller of software and hardware resources, the operating system is the cornerstone of the normal operation of the entire computer system, and its safety is of utmost importance. Since vulnerabilities are one of the main causes of security problems, in this paper, we choose to study the security of the OS mainly from the perspective of vulnerabilities. To this end, we design a system called Vtopia. By using it, we not only identify and analyze the vulnerabilities of 150 Linux OSes, but also explore the correlation between system security and some other features of Linux. The experiments have yielded many valuable findings. For example, Gentoo system generally has the most vulnerabilities, while illuestar has the least. There is no obvious correlation between the number of software and the number of vulnerabilities in the systems.