Attribute evaluation on attack trees with incomplete information. Issue 88 (January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Buldas, Ahto; Gadyatskaya, Olga; Lenin, Aleksandr; Mauw, Sjouke; Trujillo-Rasua, Rolando
• Is Part Of: Computers & security. Issue 88(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-01
• Subjects: Attack trees -- Constraint programming -- Historical data -- Security risk assessment -- Quantitative security -- Decoration problem; Computer security -- Periodicals; Electronic data processing departments -- Security measures -- Periodicals; 005.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2019.101630
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0167-4048

Abstract

Abstract: Attack trees are considered a useful tool for security modelling because they support qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. The quantitative approach is based on values associated to each node in the tree, expressing, for instance, the minimal cost or probability of an attack. Current quantitative methods for attack trees allow the analyst to, based on an initial assignment of values to the leaf nodes, derive the values of the higher nodes in the tree. In practice, however, it shows to be very difficult to obtain reliable values for all leaf nodes. The main reasons are that data is only available for some of the nodes, that data is available for intermediate nodes rather than for the leaf nodes, or even that the available data is inconsistent. We address these problems by developing a generalisation of the standard bottom-up calculation method in three ways. First, we allow initial attributions of non-leaf nodes. Second, we admit additional relations between attack steps beyond those provided by the underlying attack tree semantics. Third, we support the calculation of an approximative solution in case of inconsistencies. We illustrate our method, which is based on constraint programming, by a comprehensive case study.