Threat modeling.
This is a structured approach toward network security that assesses the potential threat landscape concerning
the point of view of an attacker.
This takes into consideration the attacker's motives, threat profile, their capability and skill.
Key assets of interest and the most likely attack vector to be used among other attributes to understand
which threats are most likely to materialize and how they will unfold in the environment.
The idea behind this is to understand the environment better by reviewing all the components and processes.
Today, Most threat modeling methodologies focus on one of the following approaches.
Asset centric.
Attacker centric and software centric.
The following diagram shows what risk inherently means.
Risk is when we have an asset that is vulnerable to a certain flaw or loophole and we have a threat
vector that can exploit the vulnerability.
Ultimately, this impacts the asset and confidentiality, integrity and availability.
In this diagram.
A is asset, P is threat, V is vulnerability, and R is risk.
There's a steps to explain the threat modeling process.
First, the scope of the analysis is defined and each component of the application and its infrastructure
is documented.
Second, this is followed by developing a data flow diagram that shows how each of these components
interacts.
This helps us assess the control mechanism.
Privileges are verified for the data movement.
Third, then potential threats are mapped to these components and they risk impact is quantified.
Fourth.
And finally, various security mitigation steps are evaluated that might already be in place to mitigate
such threats.
Here we document the requirements for additional security controls, if applicable.
On the flip side, an attacker might conduct an exercise similar to the following threat modeling.
They will start by evaluating all possible entry points into the network application or infrastructure.
Second, the next step will be focus on the dataset or assets that will be accessible to them via these
access points, and then evaluate the value or possibility of using these as a pivot point.
Third post this.
The attacker crafts the exploit and executes it.
Now that we have a basic understanding of the threats that we may face, it's important to have standardized
frameworks that can be referred by the professionals to assess the nature of these threats and the impact
they may have.
Assessing the nature of threats.
You as a security professional can use various industrialized risk frameworks and methodologies to assess
and quantify the nature of threats.
Some of the prominent ones will be discussed in next lectures.
Stride.
Stride is a security framework that classifies security threats into six categories.
Spoofing of user identity.
Hampering.
Repudiation.
Information, disclosure, denial of service.
Elevation of privilege.
This was developed by Microsoft to verify security concepts such as authenticity, integrity, known
repeatability, confidentiality, availability and authorization.
Pasta.
Process for attack, simulation and threat analysis.
Pasta.
Pasta is a risk centric approach focused on identifying potential threat patterns.
This is integrated application threat analysis that focuses on an attacker centric view that security
analysts can leverage to develop an asset centric defense strategy.
It has seven stages that build up to the impact of a threat.
These stages are definition of the objectives for the treatment of risks.
Definition of technical scope.
Application, decomposition and assertion.
Tread analysis.
Weakness and vulnerability analysis.
Attack modeling and simulation.
Risk analysis and management.
Next, we will take a look at the trick framework and see how it's used for security auditing for risk
management.
Trick is a framework for security auditing from a risk management outlook perspective.
The process starts with defining the requirement model that a threat models are based on.
The requirement model outlines the acceptable level of risk which is associated with each asset class.
The matrix is further broken down into actions such as creating, reading, updating and deleting along
with associated privileges such as load restricted and conditional.
By following this, possible threats are specified mapped alongside the risk value, which is based
on a five point scale for each action based on its probability.
Vast visual, agile and simple threat modeling.
Vast is an agile software development methodology with a focus on scaling the process across infrastructure
and SDLC.
Vast aims to provide actionable outputs for various stakeholders, and the scalability and usability
is of key factor for its adaptability in larger organizations.
This diagram illustrates a vast model.
Vast utilizes two threat models.
The application threat model and operational threat model.
The application threat model uses process flow diagrams to represent the architectural viewpoint.
Whereas the operational threat model uses data flow diagrams to represent the attackers viewpoint.
Octave.
Operationally critical threat asset and vulnerability evaluation.
Octave is a security framework that utilizes for assessing risk levels and planning countermeasures
against them.
The focus is to reduce risk exposure to potential threats and determine the likelihood of an attack
and its impact.
It has three broad stages, and these are building acid based threat profiles, classification of infrastructure
vulnerabilities, creation of an overall security strategy and activity plan for the success of exercises.
It has two known format Octave S, which is simplified format suitable for smaller organizations and
octave Allegro, which is a more comprehensive format suitable for large organizations.
In this section we have take a look at the foundational network security concepts and components that
form the strong base that's required for a secure network implementation.
After this, we took a step by step dive into various phase of building network security, which are
planning and analysis, designing, building, testing and deployment.
In the second half of this section, we have looked at an optional noisy setup and its various attributes
such as incident management, monitoring, escalation and reporting.
Lastly, we dug into network security assessments and discussed threat modeling.
By completing this section, you now understand that network security is a vast domain that requires
a bottom up approach.
If you wish to fully understand the minute mechanisms that make it tick.
As a security professional, you must have a good exposure to the fundamentals of network and the models
and frameworks explained in this section.
While at the same time be able to identify remediate deep seated technical issues.
I highly recommend doing a foundational assessment of the network configuration and reviewing policies
and procedures in place in order to incorporate security from the inside out.