ROS kinetic End of Life Date
ROS kinetic end-of-life date, support status, and CVE risk. Data from endoflife.date and official vendor documentation.
ROS kinetic was released on May 23, 2016 and support ended on May 1, 2021 — a supported lifespan of 4 years and 11 months, in line with the 4 years and 11 months median for ROS releases. It has been without security patches for 5 years and 3 months.
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When ROS kinetic reaches end of life, the maintainers stop issuing security patches for this version. CVEs discovered after the EOL date are publicly disclosed on the National Vulnerability Database with no patch available. Exploit code frequently appears on GitHub within days of disclosure.
The CVE blind spot: Most vulnerability scanners check for known CVEs but do not flag the ongoing accumulation of unpatched vulnerabilities in EOL software versions. Running ROS kinetic past its EOL date creates a permanently growing attack surface that standard security tooling will not surface.
Migrate to a supported version or implement compensating controls — network segmentation, enhanced monitoring, restricted access — while migration is underway.