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

Attacker Lists

This section lays out four sets of attackers which have been developed to various degrees.

Barnard's List

One set of attackers was developed by Robert Barnard in Intrusion Detection Systems (Barnard, 1988) and is covered in Ross Anderson's SecurityEngineering, 2nd Edition (Wiley, 2008, pp. 367-68). It consists of four attackers. Derek, a 19-year-old addict, is looking to steal to pay for his drugs. Charlie is a cat burglar who has been convicted seven times. Bruno is a “gentleman criminal” who steals art or other high-value items. Abdurrahman heads a cell of militants with military weapons training and technical support from a small government.

Verizon's Lists

Another set of attackers appears in the Verizon Data Breach Intelligence Report, and is derived from observation of their data. It consists of three types of actors who appear regularly: organized crime, state affiliated, and activists. Each is characterized by the industry of victims...