Information Security

Lecture # 10

Dr. Shafiq Hussain

Associate Professor & Chairperson
Department of Computer Science

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 Objectives
• Introduction to Threat Modelling.

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 Threat Modelling
• Threat modeling as “an activity to model the thought
processes of an adversary who is trying to achieve a
set of targets with respect to a computer system”.

• In threat modeling, the attacker’s goals are collected,

investigated and mitigated.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• The term threat represents an attacker’s goal.

• A threat on a system can materialize only if

vulnerability in the system is exploited.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• The threat modeling process is performed at the early
stages of the software development life cycle to
identify possible threats that may cause harm to
software applications if exploited.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• The threat modeling process provides a threat profile
consisting of all the adversary’s goals and a set of
mitigation measures to minimize the effects of
threats.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• Purpose of threat modeling is to “create security
specifications for software systems and to integrate
these specifications into the design of systems”.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• Further, threat modeling helps to understand the
threat profile of a system, provides a basis for secure
design and implementation, discovers vulnerabilities
in the system and provides feedback for the
application security life cycle.

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 Threat Modelling (Cont..)
• Also, the threat modeling process improves the
security of the system and confidence in the system
security.

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 The STRIDE Model
• The STRIDE model is a threat categorization model
which covers the main six broad categories of threats
that an application may face.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• Also, the threat modeling process improves the
security of the system and confidence in the system
security.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• STRIDE threat categories are Spoofing, Tampering,
Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of
Service and Elevation of Privilege.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• Spoofing is the process in which an illegal user gets
the identification information of another legal user
through wrong means and pretends to be a legal user.

• In this way user can gain access to system resources.

In tampering, an illegal user modifies system data by
gaining access to system.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• Repudiation is concerned with the refusal of an action
performed by a legal user.

• It happens when logging systems are very weak or

non-existent.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• In information disclosure private and personal data of
users or institution is opened to other users who do
not have rights to access that data.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• In denial of service the system resources are made
unavailable to legitimate users.

• In elevation of privilege, a user who has access to

certain resources gains access to other more
privileged resources for which he or she is not
authorized to access.

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 The STRIDE Model (Cont..)
• The STRIDE model is a core component of many
threat modeling tools such as SDL threat modeling
tool and TAM threat modeling tool.

• Both of these tools have been developed by Microsoft

and being used successfully in industry for threat
modeling.

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 The DREAD Model
• The DREAD model is a threat rating model which is
used to calculate risk and risk rating for the threats
identified by applying the STRIDE model.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• The term DREAD represents five categories: Damage
Potential, Reproducibility, Exploitability, Affected
Users and Discoverability.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• In damage potential we estimate the damage incurred
in the case of threat execution and attack happening.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• In reproducibility we estimate the probability of the
reoccurring of attach under the same conditions.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• In exploitability we estimate the efforts that will be
incurred by the attacker to launch an attack.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• Affected users measure the number of users that will
be affected if the threat executes and an attack is
launched on the system.

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 The DREAD Model (Cont..)
• Discoverability helps to estimate the effort incurred
by the attacker to find vulnerability in the system
design and launch an attack.

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 Questions
Any Question Please?

You can contact me at: [email protected]

Your Query will be answered within one working day.

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 Further Readings
• Chapter No. 1
Computer_Security_Principles_and_Practice_(3rd_E
dition)
By William Stallings and Lawrie Brown

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Thanks

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