Metamodel for Attackers and System Vulnerabilities

A metamodel to model the attacker’s capabilities and the vulnerabilities of the system. This can then be used to determine the potential weak spots after a new vulnerability is identified or to find attack paths to old vulnerable legacy elements such as essential components without security support. Our modelling approach is based on the commonly known vulnerability classifications Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE), and Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
Specurity Aspects
Name
Description
Describes expected vulnerabilities for elements (based on CVE/CWE)
Specification Elements
Name
Description
An attack exploiting a common weakness
An attack exploiting a common vulnerability
A vulnerability related to a common weakness
A vulnerability related to a common vulnerability
An attacker with capabilities, the attacks it performs, and the assets it compromises.
An attacker can gather data during the propagation, which is stored as a list of CompromisedData.
This describes the impact on confidentiality for exploiting this element: None would leak no additional data, and High would indicate that data is leaked.
This describes whether the attacks needs to be local or not. For instance, if there is a local vulnerability on the storage server in our running example, an attacker would need to be already in the deployed components on this server. However, in case of a network vulnerability, the attacker could attack the hardware resource from any element in the system.
This describes whether certain credentials are necessary to exploit the attack: None would require no credentials, Authenticated would require the ones necessary to access the element.

  • Security Aspects

    Specification Elements

    • CWEAttack

      An attack exploiting a common weakness
      Applies to:

    • CVEAttack

      An attack exploiting a common vulnerability
      Applies to:

    • CWEVulnerability

      A vulnerability related to a common weakness
      Applies to:

    • CVEVulnerability

      A vulnerability related to a common vulnerability
      Applies to:

    • Attacker

      An attacker with capabilities, the attacks it performs, and the assets it compromises.
      Applies to:

    • CompromisedData

      An attacker can gather data during the propagation, which is stored as a list of CompromisedData.
      Applies to:
      Data

    • ConfidentialityImpact

      This describes the impact on confidentiality for exploiting this element: None would leak no additional data, and High would indicate that data is leaked.
      Applies to:
      Data
      Activity
      Component
      Entity
      Node

    • AttackVector

      This describes whether the attacks needs to be local or not. For instance, if there is a local vulnerability on the storage server in our running example, an attacker would need to be already in the deployed components on this server. However, in case of a network vulnerability, the attacker could attack the hardware resource from any element in the system.
      Applies to:
      Connection
      Node

    • Privileges

      This describes whether certain credentials are necessary to exploit the attack: None would require no credentials, Authenticated would require the ones necessary to access the element.
      Applies to:
      State