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Abuse Case Cheat Sheet
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Last revision (mm/dd/yy): 12/15/2018
IntroductionOften when the security level of an application is mentioned in requirements, the following expressions are meet:
These security requirements are too generic and useless for a development team... To build a secure application, from an pragmatic point of view, it is important to identify the attacks which the application must defend against according to its business and technical context. ObjectiveThe objective of this cheat sheet is to provide a explanation about what an Abuse Case is, why abuse cases are important when considering the security of an application and, finally, to provide a proposal for a pragmatic approach to built a list of abuse cases and track them for every feature planned to be implemented as part of an application whatever project mode used (waterfall or agile). Important note about this Cheat Sheet: The main objective is to provide a pragmatic approach in order to allow a company or a project team to start building and handling the list of abuse cases and then customize the elements proposed to its context/culture in order to, finally, build its own method. This cheat sheet can be seen like a getting started tutorial. Context & approachWhy clearly identify the attacks?Clearly identifying the attacks against which the application must defend is essential in order to enable the following steps in a project or sprint:
Notion of Abuse CaseIn order to help build the list of attacks, the notion of Abuse Case exists. An Abuse Case can be defined as: A way to use a feature that was not expected by the implementer, allowing an attacker to influence the feature or outcome of use of the feature based on the attacker action (or input). Synopsys define an Abuse Case like this: Misuse and abuse cases describe how users misuse or exploit the weaknesses of controls in software features to attack an application. This can lead to tangible business impact when a direct attack against business functionalities, which may bring in revenue or provide positive user experience, are attacked. Abuse cases can also be an effective way to drive security requirements that lead to proper protection of these critical business use cases. Synopsys source: https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/abuse-cases-can-drive-security-requirements/ Another definition of Abuse Case by Cigital: https://cigital.com/papers/download/misuse-bp.pdf How to define the list of Abuse Cases?There are many different ways to define the list of abuse cases for a feature (that can be mapped to a user story in agile mode).
Further considering the threats to the organization, conduct a more formal analysis to determine potential misuse or abuse of functionality. Typically, this process begins with identification of normal usage scenarios, e.g. use-case diagrams if available. If a formal abuse-case technique isn’t used, generate a set of abuse-cases for each scenario by starting with a statement of normal usage and brainstorming ways in which the statement might be negated, in whole or in part. The simplest way to get started is to insert the word “no” or “not” into the usage statement in as many ways as possible, typically around nouns and verbs. Each usage scenario should generate several possible abuse-case statements. Further elaborate the abuse-case statements to include any application-specific concerns based on the business function of the software. The ultimate goal is for the completed set of abuse statements to form a model for usage patterns that should be disallowed by the software. If desired, these abuse cases can be combined with existing threat models. After initial creation, abuse-case models should be updated for active projects during the design phase. For existing projects, new requirements should be analyzed for potential abuse, and existing projects should opportunistically build abuse-cases for established functionality where practical. Open SAMM source: Threat Assessment Level 2 Actvity A Another way to achieve the building of the list can be the following (more ground and collaborative oriented): Make a workshop that includes people with the following profiles:
It is important to take in account Technical and Business kind of abuse cases and mark them accordingly. Example:
When to define the list of Abuse Cases?On agile project, the definition workshop must be made after the meeting in which User Stories are associated to a Sprint. On waterfall project, the definition workshop must be made when business feature to implements are identified and known by the business.
An example of unique ID can be ABUSE_CASE_001.
 ProposalThe proposal will use the workshop explained in previous section and will focus on the output of the workshop. Step 1: Preparation of the workshopFirst, even if it seems obvious, the key business people must be sure to know, understand and be able to explain the business features that will be processed during the workshop. Secondly, create a new Microsoft Excel file (you can also use Google Sheets or any other similar software) with the following sheets (or tabs):
FEATURES sheet:
Step 2: During the workshopUse the spreadsheet to review all the features. For each feature, follow this flow:
With the time and across projects, you will obtain your own dictionary of attacks and countermeasures that are applicable to the kind of application in your business domain. This dictionary will speed up the future workshops in a significant way. To promote the creation of this dictionary, you can, at the end of the project/sprint, gather the list of attacks and countermeasures identified in a central location (wiki, database, file...) that will be used during the next workshop in combination with the input of the offensive guys. Step 3: After the workshopThe spreadsheet contains (at this stage) the list of all abuse cases that must be handled and, potentially (depending on the capacity) corresponding countermeasures. Now, there 2 remaining task:
Step 4: During implementation - Abuse cases handling trackingIn order to track the handling of all the abuse cases, the following approach can be used: If one or several abuse cases are handled at:
Using this way, it becomes possible (via some minor scripting) to identify where the the abuse cases are addressed. Step 5: During implementation - Abuse cases handling validationAs abuse cases are defined, it is possible to put in place automated or manual validations to ensure that:
Add automated tests also allow teams to track that countermeasures against the abuse cases are still effective/in place during maintenance or bug fixing phase of a project (prevent accidental removal/disabling). It is also useful when Continuous Delivery approach is used (https://continuousdelivery.com/) to ensure that all abuse cases protections are in place before opening access to the application. Example of derivation of Abuse Cases as User StoriesThe following section show an example of derivation of Abuse Cases as User Stories, here using the OWASP TOP 10 as input source. Threat Oriented Personas:
A1:2017-InjectionEpic: Almost any source of data can be an injection vector, environment variables, parameters, external and internal web services, and all types of users. Injection flaws occur when an attacker can send hostile data to an interpreter. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I will perform an injection attack (SQL, LDAP, XPath, or NoSQL queries, OS commands, XML parsers, SMTP headers, expression languages, and ORM queries) against input fields of the User or API interfaces A2:2017-Broken AuthenticationEpic: Attackers have access to hundreds of millions of valid username and password combinations for credential stuffing, default administrative account lists, automated brute force, and dictionary attack tools. Session management attacks are well understood, particularly in relation to unexpired session tokens. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I have access to hundreds of millions of valid username and password combinations for credential stuffing. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I have default administrative account lists, automated brute force, and dictionary attack tools I use against login areas of the application and support systems. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I manipulate session tokens using expired and fake tokens to gain access. A3:2017-Sensitive Data ExposureEpic: Rather than directly attacking crypto, attackers steal keys, execute man-in-the-middle attacks, or steal clear text data off the server, while in transit, or from the user’s client, e.g. browser. A manual attack is generally required. Previously retrieved password databases could be brute forced by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Abuse Case: As an attacker, I steal keys that were exposed in the application to get unauthorized access to the application or system. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I execute man-in-the-middle attacks to get access to traffic and leverage it to see sensitive data and possibly get unauthorized access to the application. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I steal clear text data off the server, while in transit, or from the user’s client, e.g. browser to get unauthorized access to the application or system. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find and target old or weak cryptographic algorithms by capturing traffic and breaking the encryption. A4:2017-XML External Entities (XXE)Epic: Attackers can exploit vulnerable XML processors if they can upload XML or include hostile content in an XML document, exploiting vulnerable code, dependencies or integrations. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I exploit vulnerable areas of the application where the user or system can upload XML to extract data, execute a remote request from the server, scan internal systems, perform a denial-of-service attack, as well as execute other attacks. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I include hostile content in an XML document which is uploaded to the application or system to extract data, execute a remote request from the server, scan internal systems, perform a denial-of-service attack, as well as execute other attacks. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I include malicious XML code to exploit vulnerable code, dependencies or integrations to extract data, execute a remote request from the server, scan internal systems, perform a denial-of-service attack (e.g. Billion Laughs attack), as well as execute other attacks. A5:2017-Broken Access ControlEpic: Exploitation of access control is a core skill of attackers. Access control is detectable using manual means, or possibly through automation for the absence of access controls in certain frameworks. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I bypass access control checks by modifying the URL, internal application state, or the HTML page, or simply using a custom API attack tool. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I manipulate the primary key and change it to access another's users record, permitting viewing or editing someone else's account. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I manipulate sessions, access tokens, or other access controls in the application to act as a user without being logged in, or acting as an admin/privileged user when logged in as a user. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I leverage metadata manipulation, such as replaying or tampering with a JSON Web Token (JWT) access control token or a cookie or hidden field manipulated to elevate privileges or abusing JWT invalidation. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I exploit Cross-Origin Resource Sharing CORS misconfiguration allowing unauthorized API access. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I force browsing to authenticated pages as an unauthenticated user or to privileged pages as a standard user. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I access APIs with missing access controls for POST, PUT and DELETE. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I target default crypto keys in use, weak crypto keys generated or re-used, or keys where rotation missing is missing. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find areas where the user agent (e.g. app, mail client) does not verify if the received server certificate is valid and perform attacks where I get unauthorized access to data. A6:2017-Security MisconfigurationEpic: Attackers will often attempt to exploit unpatched flaws or access default accounts, unused pages, unprotected files and directories, etc to gain unauthorized access or knowledge of the system. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find and exploit missing appropriate security hardening configurations on any part of the application stack, or improperly configured permissions on cloud services. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find unnecessary features which are enabled or installed (e.g. unnecessary ports, services, pages, accounts, or privileges) and attack or exploit the weakness. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I use default accounts and their passwords to access systems, interfaces, or perform actions on components which I should not be able to. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find areas of the application where error handling reveals stack traces or other overly informative error messages I can use for further exploitation. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find areas where upgraded systems, latest security features are disabled or not configured securely. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find security settings in the application servers, application frameworks (e.g. Struts, Spring, ASP.NET), libraries, databases, etc. not set to secure values. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find the server does not send security headers or directives or they are not set to secure values. A7:2017-Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)Epic: XSS is the second most prevalent issue in the OWASP Top 10, and is found in around two-thirds of all applications. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I perform reflected XSS where the application or API includes unvalidated and unescaped user input as part of HTML output. My successful attack can allow the attacker to execute arbitrary HTML and JavaScript in my victim’s browser. Typically the victim will need to interact with some malicious link that points to an attacker-controlled page, such as malicious watering hole websites, advertisements, or similar. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I perform stored XSS where the application or API stores unsanitized user input that is viewed at a later time by another user or an administrator. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I perform DOM XSS where JavaScript frameworks, single-page applications, and APIs that dynamically include attacker-controllable data to a page is vulnerable to DOM XSS. A8:2017-Insecure DeserializationEpic: Exploitation of deserialization is somewhat difficult, as off the shelf exploits rarely work without changes or tweaks to the underlying exploit code. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find areas of the application and APIs where deserialization of hostile or tampered objects can be supplied. As a result, I can focus on an object and data structure related attacks where the attacker modifies application logic or achieves arbitrary remote code execution if there are classes available to the application that can change behavior during or after deserialization. Or I focus on data tampering attacks such as access-control-related attacks where existing data structures are used but the content is changed. A9:2017-Using Components with Known VulnerabilitiesEpic: While it is easy to find already-written exploits for many known vulnerabilities, other vulnerabilities require concentrated effort to develop a custom exploit. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I find common open source or closed source packages with weaknesses and perform attacks against vulnerabilities and exploits which are disclosed A10:2017-Insufficient Logging & MonitoringEpic: Exploitation of insufficient logging and monitoring is the bedrock of nearly every major incident. Attackers rely on the lack of monitoring and timely response to achieve their goals without being detected. In 2016, identifying a breach took an average of 191 days – plenty of time for damage to be inflicted. Abuse Case: As an attacker, I attack an organization and the logs, monitoring systems, and teams do not see or respond to my attacks. Sources of the schemasAll schemas were created using https://www.draw.io/ site and exported (as PNG image) for integration into this article. All XML descriptor files for each schema are available below (using XML description, modification of the schema is possible using DRAW.IO site): Authors and Primary EditorsJames Robinson - jrobinson[at]netskope.com Dominique Righetto - [email protected] Other Cheatsheets |
