Automated Threat Modeling Approaches: Comparison of Open Source Tools

Abstract

The software systems of modern architectures are characterized by high heterogeneity and by the use of a model that delegates the control of individual components to third parties, making these systems more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. As a consequence, best practices, such as the Security-by-Design development methodologies, suggest taking into account security all over the systems life cycle, starting from the very early stages (e.g. from initial requirement analysis). Thus, one of the most relevant practices is Threat Modeling (TM), i.e. the activity devoted to identifying the possible threats that may affect the system. According to most security-related best practices, TM should be done as early as possible, in order to help in the requirement elicitation. Threat Modeling is a complex activity, that requires security experts with consolidated skills, able to predict and anticipate the possible issues: as a consequence, it is a costly activity, both in terms of time and money. Due to the continuous need of enforcing security, the effect of new regulation and the wide diffusion of ICT systems, there is a recent growth of tools and techniques that support and aims at automatizing Threat modelling activities. This work illustrates the approach adopted by our research team and compares the results of our technique with two other existing tools, in order to offer a brief overview of the state of the art of threat modelling automation techniques and of state of art limits and open research topics. It is worth noting that our comparison does not aims at being complete and focuses only on open tools (or on their free/community version), but offers a basis for understanding the progress of security automation processes in terms of threat modelling.