Abuse Cases Are Useful


Determining the can'ts and won'ts is often difficult for those who think only about positive features. Some guidance exists in the form of attack patterns. Attack patterns are like patterns in sewinga blueprint for creating a kind of attack. Everyone's favorite software security example, the buffer overflow, follows several different standard patterns. Patterns allow for a fair amount of variation on a theme. They can take into account many dimensions, including timing, resources required, techniques, and so forth. Attack patterns can be used to guide abuse case development.

Security requirements specify the security apparatus for software systems. In addition to capturing and describing relevant attacks, abuse cases allow an analyst to think carefully through what happens when these functional security mechanisms fail or are otherwise compromised.

Clearly, generating abuse cases is important. The main benefit of abuse cases is that they provide essential insight into a system's assumptions and how attackers will approach and undermine them. Of course, like all good things, abuse cases can be overused (and generated forever with little impact on actual security). A solid approach to this technique requires a combination of security expertise and subject matter expertise to prioritize abuse cases as they are generated and to strike the right balance between cost and value.




Software Security. Building Security In
Software Security: Building Security In
ISBN: 0321356705
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 154
Authors: Gary McGraw

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