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

Assets

Please only use this section after you have considered the risks and difficulties of asset-centric modeling, as discussed in Chapters 2 “Strategies for Threat Modeling” and 19 “Architecting for Success.”

Computers as Assets

You can label various types of computers as assets, including the following:

  • Computers used by individuals
    • This computer
    • A laptop
    • A mobile phone
    • iPad/Kindle/Nook
    • etc.
  • Servers
    • Web server
    • E-mail server
    • Database server
    • etc.
  • Security systems
    • Firewall
    • VPN concentrator
    • Log server
  • Functional groups
    • Development systems
    • Financial systems
    • Manufacturing systems

People as Assets

You can think of people as assets who could come under attack. (Of course, it is more correct to consider them as resources.) Some groups of people you might consider include the following:

  • Executives
    • Executive assistants
  • Sysadmins
  • Sales people
  • Janitorial staff
  • Food-processing staff
  • Contractors of various stripes
  • Any employee
  • Citizens
  • Immigrants
  • Minorities...