Book Image

Threat Modeling

By : Adam Shostack
Book Image

Threat Modeling

By: Adam Shostack

Overview of this book

As more software is delivered on the Internet or operates on Internet-connected devices, the design of secure software is critical. This book will give you the confidence to design secure software products and systems and test their designs against threats. This book is the only security book to be chosen as a Dr. Dobbs Jolt Award Finalist since Bruce Schneier?s Secrets and Lies and Applied Cryptography! The book starts with an introduction to threat modeling and focuses on the key new skills that you'll need to threat model and lays out a methodology that's designed for people who are new to threat modeling. Next, you?ll explore approaches to find threats and study the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Moving ahead, you?ll manage threats and learn about the activities involved in threat modeling. You?ll also focus on threat modeling of specific technologies and find out tricky areas and learn to address them. Towards the end, you?ll shift your attention to the future of threat modeling and its approaches in your organization. By the end of this book, you?ll be able to use threat modeling in the security development lifecycle and in the overall software and systems design processes.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
7
Glossary
8
Bibliography
10
End User License Agreement

Introduction

All models are wrong, some models are useful.

— George Box

This book describes the useful models you can employ to address or mitigate these potential threats. People who build software, systems, or things with software need to address the many predictable threats their systems can face.

Threat modeling is a fancy name for something we all do instinctively. If I asked you to threat model your house, you might start by thinking about the precious things within it: your family, heirlooms, photos, or perhaps your collection of signed movie posters. You might start thinking about the ways someone might break in, such as unlocked doors or open windows. And you might start thinking about the sorts of people who might break in, including neighborhood kids, professional burglars, drug addicts, perhaps a stalker, or someone trying to steal your Picasso original.

Each of these examples has an analog in the software world, but for now, the important thing is not how you guard...