Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Abstract: Attack-defense trees are a novel methodology for graphical security modeling and assessment. The methodology includes visual, intuitive tree models whose analysis is supported by a rigorous mathematical formalism. Both, the intuitive and the formal components of the approach can be used for quantitative analysis of attack-defense scenarios. In practice, we use intuitive questions to ask about aspects of scenarios we are interested in. Formally, a computational procedure, defined with the help of attribute domains and a bottom-up algorithm, is applied to derive the corresponding numerical values. This paper bridges the gap between the intuitive and the formal way of quantitatively assessing attack-defense scenarios. We discuss how to properly specify a question, so that it can be answered unambiguously. Given a well specified question, we then show how to derive an appropriate attribute domain which constitutes the corresponding formal model. Since any attack tree is in particular an attack-defense tree, our analysis is also an advancement of the attack tree methodology.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Kordy, Barbara, Mauw, Sjouke, Schweitzer, Patrick
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G3315152979, G8173639601
OpenAlex ID: W2951994276