Threats, Mechanisms, and Standards

iang comments on Adam's (and friends) work on Threat Modeling. ian takes issue with the same STRIDE point that I don't like (my repudiation rant will be familiar to anyone who has taken my classes).

Threat		Security Property
Spoofing	-->	Authentication
Tampering	-->	Integrity
Dispute	-->	Evidence
Information Disclosure	-->	Encryption
Denial of Service	-->	Availability
Elevation of Privilege	-->	Authorisation

Could not agree more with changing Repudiation --> PKI to Dispute --> evidence/audit

Connecting the dots further to standards and implementations we can see how our security standards position us to deal with threats

Threat	Security Property	Standard
Spoofing	Authentication	XML Sig - widely implemented
Tampering	Integrity	XML Sig - widely implemented
Dispute	Evidence/Audit	None - (note this is why we need WS-Anasazi)
Information Disclosure	Encryption	XML Enc - widely implemented
Denial of Service	Availability	No standard
Elevation of Privilege	Authorization	XACML, SAML ADA - not widely implemented

So in a nutshell, start with a threat model, identify relevant countermeasures, the look for the standards and patterns that address them

Comments

[Andrew Jaquith]

If you consult a modern dictionary, you won't find "repudiation" (or the even worse "non-repudiation") anywhere except Wikipedia. It's a word that was invented by the PKI crowd to describe an alleged benefit of the technology. "Evidence," indeed, is the converse and gets closer to the real nub of the issue.

[stacy]

> If you consult a modern dictionary, you won't find
> "repudiation" (or the even worse "non-repudiation")
> anywhere except Wikipedia.

Sorry Andrew, but repudiate and repudiation are both found in Merriam-Webster Online
http://www.merriam-webster.com/