Threatmodeling3 x

Title: Threat Modeling

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Introduction

Threat modeling is a process, and a proactive strategy used to identify and evaluate various potential threats, such as structural vulnerabilities. It also involves the development of various tests and methods to detectecting and also responding to potential threats. It also involves grasping how various threats may affect a system; it also involves the classification of the threats and the application of effective countermeasures that can effectively combat them. Threat modeling is very crucial because it helps in getting latest software or even when building software. It also helps security teams in ensuring safeties are in the right line with the evolving threats. Even when taking by choice tools, it tends to help various teams in fathoming inadequate security. Then it aids teams to rank fixes to the existing software based on the severity and effect of the anticipated threats. But when performing threat modeling, one should involve various processes and aspects, which are the threat modeling components, to avoid any kind of failure of a model. Major components of threat modeling are threat intelligence, the risk assessment, mapping of the threat and mitigating capabilities, and asset identification (Santos et al.,

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7). There are various threat models such as STRIDE, PASTA, and CVSS.

STRIDE threat modeling

The suitable threat should be used and determined by the type of threat aiming to model and for what purpose. One of the major threat models is STRIDE threat modeling. Microsoft engineers have created it to discover various system threats. It is also used with the target system model, which makes it the most effective in evaluating individual systems. It includes new threat-based tables, per interaction and element (Khan et al., 2017). The threat model aims to ensure that applications meet the security directives of the confidentiality, integrity, and availability triad. STRIDE stands for spoofing whereby a user acts in a hypocrisy manner. Second is tampering, which is used as the attackers modify a component, repudiation whereby monitoring of threat events is not al

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ed. There is Information disclosure whereby there is data leakage, Denial of services whereby services are overloaded, disclosing and elevating privilege whereby attacks tend to offer privileges to themselves inoder to be able to control the system..

PASTA threat modeling

The second threat model is the PASTA, this kind of threat model has seven different steps that are used to give guidelines to teams in terms of identifying, counting, and prioritization of threats as well as to dynamically. The first step of the model is to define the business objective because it has been designed to correlate business objectives. The second step is defining the technical scope of the assets as well as the available components. Then there is the application, decomposition, and identification of the application controls. Besides that, there is an analysis of threat according to the threat intelligence. Then there is the detection of the potential vulnerability (Santos et al.,2017). The sixth step is to attack enumeration and also to model. Finally, there is an analysis of risk and the development of countermeasures, which is the seventh step of this threat modeling. It works better for the organizations which are willing to adjust the threat modeling with the various strategic objectives which are suitable. But the alignment can be a weakness of the threat modeling based on the technology literacy of the major organizational stakeholders.

CVSS threat modeling

Thirdly there is the Common Vulnerability Scoring System which is known as (CVSS). It is one of the standardized threats scoring systems that are mainly used purposely for the vulnerabilities which are known. CVSS was developed the (NIST) then it was maintained by the (FIRST). It was designed to help security teams to be able to access threats ten identify their effects and the existing countermeasures (Petraityte et al.,2018). Besides that, it aids experts to assess and apply threat intelligence, which different people effectively develop. CVSS threat model involves various qualities which makes it possible for the security teams to specifically modify various risk scores according to personal SC. This kind of threat is currently working on personal improvements, which will have to form the basis of the upcoming CVSS version.

Compare and contrast

Authentication

and credentials of STRIDE

First Common risks associated with STRIDE threat modeling

Spoofing

: brute forcing

high risk

Tampering: injection attacks

medium

Repudiation: deleting of all records

All of the above three threat modeling and others can identify potential threats. But the number of the threats and the types of threats and the quality, consistency alongside the values that are received from the treat models, will always differ. Based on that, the STRIDE becomes better than the PASTA and CVSS, respectively. That is because it has more benefits than the other two threat models. STRIDE is a kind of threat modeling that is very straightforward and brutally to the main point than the PASTA, which has seven different steps that should be followed to the end, and CVSS, which should be used only when the vulnerability is already well known. It is specifically made to consider and identify the potential threats towards a system, unlike the CVSS, which identify the impacts and access the threat that is already known, and the PASTA, which offers management and enumeration. STRIDE is the best among the three because it makes sure that the applications meet the security directives of the following, integrity, confidentiality, and availability and authentication alongside the authorization, which is different from both the PASTA and CVSS (Sanfilippo et al., 2019). STRIDE threat modeling is also used with the model of a target system, which makes the threat model be the most effective model for evaluating personal systems, unlike the PASTA, which is now trying to work on it, and the CVSS, which does is not able.

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Stride Methodology

Spoofing

Tampering

Repudiation

Information Disclosure

Denial of Service (DOS)

Elevation of privilege

The STRIDE threat modeling UML Diagram

Conclusion

To sum up, different threat models are used to identify and evaluate various potential threats. Threat modeling has various benefits, such as ensuring safety are in the correct line with the raising threats. It aids teams to rank fixes to the software according to the severity and effect of the predicted threats and adopting new or even when creating software. Threat modeling has various components such as threat intelligence, the risk assessment, mapping of the threat, which should be used to avoid failure. There are some of the main threat models such as CVSS, PASTA, and STRIDE. But a suitable threat should be used and determined by the type of threat which one is aiming to model and an effective reason. STRIDE is used with the system model with is the main target, which makes it to me effective compared to the other threat modeling in terms of personal system evaluation (Santos et al.,2017).On the other hand, PASTA works better for the organizations that are willing to align the threat modeling with the strategic objectives. Then there is the CVSS, which is used purposely for the vulnerabilities which are known. But out of all the three threat models, STRIDE stands out to be the best since it has more benefits than the other two.

References

Khan, R., McLaughlin, K., Laverty, D., & Sezer, S. (2017). STRIDE-based threat modeling for cyber-physical systems. 2017 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference Europe (ISGT-Europe). 

https://doi.org/10.1109/isgteurope.2017.8260283

Petraityte, M., Dehghantanha, A., & Epiphaniou, G. (2018). A model for Android and Ios applications risk calculation: CVSS analysis and enhancement using case-control studies. Advances in Information Security, 219-237. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73951-9_11

Sanfilippo, J., Abegaz, T., Payne, B., & Salimi, A. (2019). STRIDE-based threat modeling for MySQL databases. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 368-378. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32523-7_25

Santos, E. E., Santos, E., Korah, J., Thompson, J. E., Murugappan, V., Subramanian, S., & Yan Zhao. (2017). Modeling insider threat types in cyber organizations. 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST). 

https://doi.org/10.1109/ths.2017.7943445