Your vulnerability scanner gives every EOL package a clean bill of health — zero CVEs, no alerts, nothing to see here. That silence is not safety. It is a measurement failure. Here is the metric that fills the gap. May 15, 2026 · endoflife.ai The Metric Everyone Is Using Is Wrong Ask any security engineer how they measure software risk and they will tell you the same thing: CVE count. How many known vulnerabilities does this package have? What is the CVSS score? Is it in the NVD? Is there a patch? This is a reasonable framework for software that is actively maintained. When a vendor is issuing patches, the CVE count reflects real, current exposure. But the moment software reaches end of life, the CVE framework breaks down completely — and most teams never notice. Here is what happens when software goes EOL: the vendor stops issuing patches. Full stop. CVEs that are discovered after the EOL date are publicly disclosed on the NVD with no patch available. Exploit code appears on GitHub within days.…