RE: Threat Modelling

[brennan stewart <brennan () ideahamster org>]

The tools used for Risk Management in certification & accreditation
(NIACAP/DITSCAP) are very effective for threat modeling. Some of them
are high level, and others can be technical. The problem with them
though, is their extreme price tags, proprietary content, lack of
component re-usability, and perhaps some information wouldn't be to the
technical level security professionals would require.  They also don't
have the level of integration that is really vital.

While I know the initial thread was discussing Threat Modeling, it
appears there is a huge gap in the comprehensive risk assessment/threat
management arena (even with commercial software)

It would appear that an open source solution would fit the bill for
this. My ideas would take it far past mere threat modeling though for a
more complete, quantitative picture of risk, mitigations, dollar
amounts, residual risk, etc.

Some sample requirements:
Asset detailing, currency value assignment
Complete threat listing, in DB
Attacks\exposures\etc matched to the OSVDB (maybe the legacy CVE/ICAT
also)
Logic to understand system configurations (Linux/Unix/Windows/Cisco/etc)
preloaded with sample hardening, and scoring mechanisms (NIST 800
series)
Logic to understand policies + DB
Logic to understand legal requirements + DB (swap requirements by
country/business/etc)
Network aggregation
Then, some nice reporting functions to top it off
(continued)

I know many of these data sources exist already individually.

regards,

Brennan


On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 04:58, Brewis, Mark wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Mark Curphey [mailto:mark () curphey com]
> > >
> > > CRAMM is a general / generic Risk Assessment tool for 
> > > information securtity.
>
> For those who don't know, CRAMM is a high-level tool designed to model risk at the physical, policy and procedural 
> level, rather than the technical. Early versions were difficult to use, and even harder to interpret.  The ISO 17799 
> aligned version is far more powerful, although it needs someone skilled to drive it.
>
> A more technical, network-level risk assessment/threat modelling tool back in the late 1990's was the L3 Network 
> Security Expert/Retriever, a (for the time) sophisticated network mapping and risk analysis system . It was bought by 
> Symantec about 2000 and fairly promptly disappeared.  If I remember correctly, you were able to define any type of 
> custom threats and countermeasures, and model them with a reasonable level of granularity.  I only ever used it to 
> model systems, rather than applications, but it was a really interesting hybrid tool.
>
> Both tools use/used some variation of the standard:    
>
> *     Define Assets
> *     Define Vulnerabilities
> *     Define Threats
> *     Define Mitigation Strategies
>
> within
>
> *     Technical
> *     Management
> *     Operational
>
> Risk-Remediation areas.
>
> Neither of these addresses your requirements (particularly L3, since it appears to have gone), although I think the 
> L3 tool(s) came closest.  There isn't anything I know of that even comes close to doing some of this, never mind 
> everything.  Most of the case and sequence diagrams I've seen have been manually defined and Visio drawn 
> (paradoxically, probably the main utility that helped kill off L3 Expert/Retriever).  Risk modelling has been 
> extrapolated from those, in a generally ad hoc fashion.
>
> In many respects, I think you've answered your own question - there is a gap in this area.  If Symantec still have 
> the L3 code base lying around (and it didn't metamorphose into the Vulnerability Assessment product) it might be 
> worth dusting down.
>
> Mark
>
> Mark Brewis
>
> Security Consultant
> EDS
> UK Information Assurance Group
> Wavendon Tower
> Milton Keynes
> Buckinghamshire
> MK17 8LX.
>
> Tel:  +44 (0)1908 28 4013
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>
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