APT Rules

APT001: APT metadata is stale

Severity: warn

APT caches repository metadata locally. Stale metadata (older than 7 days) means newly published security patches in dependencies will not be discovered or installed when packages are added or upgraded. Refresh metadata regularly to ensure timely access to upstream fixes.

What it checks:

• mtime of /var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp or /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin
• Skipped if apt-get is not installed or no timestamp source is available

Remediation:

sudo apt update