Frequently Asked Question
How would an identified Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability affect a company's ability to pass a PCI DSS vulnerability scan from an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV)?
While some ASVs may report DoS vulnerabilities as relatively high risks, the PCI SSC has clearly instructed ASVs to not consider this vulnerability when determining compliance of the ASV scan results. The Exceptions to Scoring Vulnerabilities with the NVD section of the ASV Program Guide states that, "In the case of denial-of-service vulnerabilities (where the vulnerability has both a CVSS Confidentiality Impact of ‘None’ and a CVSS Integrity Impact of ‘None’), the vulnerability must not be ranked as a failure.” If loss of network availability from an attack such as DoS would not expose cardholder data to the risk of being compromised, the vulnerability would not be relevant to a company's compliance with the PCI DSS.
April 2012
Article Number: 1060
