Why do Internet Devices Remain Vulnerable? A Survey with System Administrators

Abstract

—In efforts to understand the reasons behind Internet-connected devices remaining vulnerable for a long time, previous literature analyzed the effectiveness of large-scale vul- nerability notifications on remediation rates. Herein we focus on the perspective of system administrators. Through an online sur- vey study with 89 system administrators worldwide, we investigate factors affecting their decisions to remediate or ignore a security vulnerability. We use Censys to find servers with vulnerable public-facing services, extract the abuse contact information from WHOIS, and email an invitation to fill out the survey. We found no evidence that awareness of the existence of a vulnerability affects remediation plans, which explains the consistently small remediation rates following notification campaigns conducted in previous research. More interestingly, participants did not agree on a specific factor as the primary cause for lack of remediation. Many factors appeared roughly equally important, including backwards compatibility, technical knowledge, available resources, and motive to remediate.