Eliciting security requirements by misuse cases

TLDR

Use case diagrams are valuable for functional requirements but poorly support security needs, which are increasingly critical in e‑commerce. The study explores applying use case diagrams to elicit security requirements. The authors extend use case diagrams with misuse cases to model actions the system should prevent and those it should support.

Abstract

Use case diagrams (L. Jacobson et al., 1992) have proven quite helpful in requirements engineering, both for eliciting requirements and getting a better overview of requirements already stated. However, not all kinds of requirements are equally well supported by use case diagrams. They are good for functional requirements, but poorer at e.g., security requirements, which often concentrate on what should not happen in the system. With the advent of e- and m-commerce applications, security requirements are growing in importance, also for quite simple applications where a short lead time is important. Thus, it would be interesting to look into the possibility for applying use cases on this arena. The paper suggests how this can be done, extending the diagrams with misuse cases. This new construct makes it possible to represent actions that the system should prevent, together with those actions which it should support.