Summary

Summary

In this chapter, I discussed the role of the security tester and how your job is not to prove that features work; rather, it is to determine how you can make features work in ways not anticipated by the developer. You should use the threat model to determine the components within the application that require test plans. The threat model also helps you understand how to attack the application components; use the STRIDE threat categories to decide what techniques to use to test that the threat is mitigated.

Data mutation is an incredibly useful way to force an application to fail. You should build data mutation routines for your application and use them to launch attacks at your application interfaces.

Finally, you can determine whether your application is becoming more or less susceptible to attack by measuring its attack surface. Build such a determination into the development process to make sure your application is becoming less susceptible to attack.