AADT: Asset-Driven Attack-Defense Tree

Nan Messe, Avi Shaked

2025

Abstract

Attack trees are widely used in threat modelling and risk analysis to describe threats and identify attacks that realize them. Their extension, attack-defense trees, allows for depicting interactions between attackers and defenders. However, current graphical representations of attack(-defense) trees focus primarily on threat scenarios and do not account for the representation of domain elements and their hierarchical organization. Com-promised domain elements (e.g., systems, sub-systems, components, etc.) are thus not directly highlighted in any of these tree representations, which requires additional effort from decision-makers during impact analysis. To help make impact analysis more explicit and enable stakeholders to assign and evaluate security controls more effectively, we propose a novel methodology for graphical secure system modelling and assessment, the “Asset-Driven Attack-Defense Tree” (AADT). AADT is an extension of the attack-defense tree, combining the security and system views for seamless secure system development. AADT’s main contribution lies in bridging the system and security views while representing domain elements, associated vulnerabilities, and security controls at different levels of abstraction, which is aligned with the system development lifecy-cle. This layered representation is especially useful in the fast-evolving cyber threat landscape, where diverse attack techniques often exploit similar vulnerabilities. By associating vulnerability categories with domain elements and proposing high-level security controls, AADT helps stakeholders manage a broad spectrum of attacks targeting similar vulnerabilities, thus enabling a more proactive and structured approach to secure system development. We also present a formalism for AADT and illustrate the AADT methodology using a simple, real-world scenario based on the existing security body of knowledge.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Messe N. and Shaked A. (2025). AADT: Asset-Driven Attack-Defense Tree. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE; ISBN 978-989-758-742-9, SciTePress, pages 565-572. DOI: 10.5220/0013310100003928

in Bibtex Style

@conference{enase25,
author={Nan Messe and Avi Shaked},
title={AADT: Asset-Driven Attack-Defense Tree},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE},
year={2025},
pages={565-572},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013310100003928},
isbn={978-989-758-742-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE
TI - AADT: Asset-Driven Attack-Defense Tree
SN - 978-989-758-742-9
AU - Messe N.
AU - Shaked A.
PY - 2025
SP - 565
EP - 572
DO - 10.5220/0013310100003928
PB - SciTePress