> In other words, the number is fake

In other words, the method of assigning CVEs hasn't changed, but the number of CVEs has risen sharply.

That's false, the kernel rarely assigned CVEs, now it does assign them liberally. So, the method changed

Yes, and all of that changed in 2024 so fairly recently: http://www.kroah.com/log/blog/2024/02/13/linux-is-a-cna/