An extended misuse case notation: Including vulnerabilities and the insider threat

Abstract

Abstract. Misuse cases are a useful technique for eliciting and modelling security requirements and threats. In addition they may be very useful in a risk analysis process, particularly as part of the system development process. The original misuse case notation adds inverted use cases to model threats and inverted actors to represent attackers. However, an attack is usually performed by exploiting a vulnerability in a system and it would be useful to be able to represent vulnerable functions in a model. In addition, it should be possible to discern between insiders and outside attackers in a model, as they have very different abilities and potential for attacking a system. This paper therefore proposes an extended misuse case notation that includes the ability to represent vulnerabilities and the insider threat, and discusses the use of this extended notation in the system development and risk analysis processes. 1